thanks mixiepixie for the images!

I was deeply saddened to learn of Mark Linkous’ suicide on March 6th. His band, Sparklehorse, was one of my favorites.  I had only discovered him about two years ago while browsing the CDs in the Beaverton Library. “Dreamt For Lightyears in the Belly of a Mountain” was not only filled with indie lullaby weirdness but had a fabulous album cover; a collage of a smiling baby with a giant crown surrounded by birds, bees, frogs, flowers, fruit, and stars. The artist had created a masterpiece along with the songwriter/performer. If I ever need to chill this is the music I listen to.

I created my own tribute here with a variation of the baby king-while altering a W magazine ad by ‘BULGARI” featuring the actress Julieanne Moore. The page was lacking a focal point so I constructed a baby king out of scraps from my stash and the following magazines: Eating Right, Travel & Leisure, and Vogue. Crown from freebie sheet downloaded from Flickr member ‘ArtsyFartsy Queen’, border pieces from freebie created by my Crowabout High Priestess pal, ‘Nancy Baumiller” (for valentines day?) and some various trims from my K&Co scrap pile. There is a little bit of handwritten text; rambling about my pain levels after undergoing a procedure called Radio Frequency. It is treatment for a disabling condition known as ‘cervical radiculopathy’. I was in so much pain this morning I called in ill to work (knowing that I would be unable to drive or do my job from the massive pain meds I’m on).

For info on Sparklehorse: http://www.sparklehorse.com/

I do not know why Mark Linkous chose to take his life but understand he was troubled and had a history of unbearable pain and sadness. This I can relate to. I just hope that he is now at peace in a magical calm dreamlike place that is like his music, the beautiful music that was his gift to us.

the watercolor pencils are so much fun…i used them to enhance the somewhat bland portraits. 8×11 pencil ink and watercolor….

the images are mostly from Artsyfartsy Queen, some Nancy Baumiller’s crowabout collage sheets and the mouths are from the lovely scarlett lipped KBP when we shopped at Momoberry in LA and she was looking delightfuly ghoulish while holding a Hello Kitty Koromi doll. K does not have teeth like that-i just got the spray can out and ‘enhanced’ her grin. apologies K, if you ever see this!

if my neck felt better I may have done this collage on paper but since I was low on ink and also feeling sort of crappy I cheated and made it in the collage creator. this is not my best and if you felt like you had a 5 inch mutant wasp biting and stinging your neck with electricity pulsing after each bite you’d do that same as i did…sort of surprised myself when I guessed “flinch” was a card card game. and for some reason cut & paste to wiki is not working….

patrick???

I worked on Crowabout #37. Since I wanted to be totally original with my collage I created a kalidescope effect with the floral border that came on the collage sheet. There was also a pig and a flapper gal and a bunch of bird eggs and vintage fruit crate labels. I am sort of hooked on the adhesive gems and went a little psychodelic on this one:

 I cut up all the text from the fruit labels and came up with:

Date Dribble Deluxe A Circle Of Luscious Girl Fruit

I stuck an egg on the Blue Ribbon Berry’s and put that on her tummy. I also put an egg on her head. I had a dress in the image stash (not part of the collage sheet) that I colored with pastels to match the blue sky background.

I think she is Egg-Ceptional.

Don’t you?