hunting and gathering

i love to incorporate little bits and pieces of ephemera in my collages. in the mixed media piece to the left, i used pieces torn from old cookbooks, a vintage music book, a 1943 edition of wuthering heights, a 1907 copy of french short stories and many different scrapbook papers. nothing would make me happier than to spend a sunny saturday afternoon at a flea market hunting and gathering a bigger supply of ephemera. of course, i love books (see "love affair" post below) so my obsession to collect old books is a double desire to increase my book collection and increase my supply of things to collage. i remember reading somewhere once that the reason we humans feel the need to collect things is because generations ago inhabitants on this continent were hunter/gatherers in order to survive. today we don't need to hunt or gather for survival but the need to hunt/gather is still ingrained into our genetic make-up. so we resort to collecting in order to fill that void in our lives. sounds like a good enough excuse to me to warrant a day trip to the flea market! smile!

this particular original was my first sale from my etsy boutique. the buyer left wonderful feedback that she loved the art and would find it difficult to give it away to her sister as a gift. i'm working on a series similar to this one. i'll post photos soon. in the meantime, get out there and hunt/gather to your heart's content. apparently, we really have no choice in the matter. :)