Mirror Mirror and Waste Land

A friend dropped in to visit last weekend while I was writing my blog. I told him I was doing an art journal and his response was are you REALLY writing the truth? He said he'd never let anyone read his journal. Of course there are things I write in private journals I do not share, but what I post here is what's on my mind/soul artistically when I sit down to post this blog.

Today I felt like posting on two different topics:

1. Mirror Mirror - works in encaustic
2. Waste Land - a documentary film I stumbled upon online today

I'm starting to feel comfortable with progress for Mirror Mirror, Oct. show at Subway Gallery, Bisbee, but it sure has been a major challenge with lots of curves in the road along the way. I have to say there have truly been times I thought I'd totally lost my mind to come up with this theme and not incorporate my photography, relying on my newly acquired encaustic skill working with appropriated images that are majorly tweaked in Photoshop for the most part before working in encaustic. My saving grace has been my confidence with my Photoshop skills.  Some artists friends have told me my panic has been for nought, so I concentrate on that and the knowledge that I am a very harsh critic of myself, maybe (yikes shall I admit this?) at time to a fault.

So here is #15 from Mirror Mirror, 16x20 completed mixed media encaustic, my largest encaustic piece to date. I am pleased with the final results and pleased it went as smoothly as it did going to this larger image size as keeping the  temp of this large surface workable (and concentrating heat only on areas I was working on so as not to melt off other finished areas) while painting and adding layers of wax was a new challenge.

Mirror Mirror #15

And here is the Caravaggio original of Narcissus painted in 1597 to 1599:

Now for a quantum leap and change in topic from Caravaggio and Encaustic to Waste Land, a documentary film by photographer Vik Muniz. This is from the film synopsis:
Filmed over nearly three years, WASTE LAND follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of "catadores" -- or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz's initial objective was to "paint" the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both dignity and despair as the catadores begin to re-imagine their lives. Walker (Devil's Playground, Blindsight) has great access to the entire process and, in the end, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit.
Here is a link to Waste Land Film Homepage
They do have a trailer on their Web site, well worth seeing, but I had trouble opening it from the and did find an easy to open You Tube link here: Waste Land trailer
It's about 2 minutes of film worth watching. The end results artwork is incredible. All sales of artwork went to the catadores.

Bravo!