Four new squares for you. Two pieces of music are very familiar, and two I'd never heard of before! First of all, Panis Angelicus, which has been requested by Sharon, for Kay. I have loved this piece since I was a small girl, although I've never sung it myself. So, how do you depict angelic bread? I have painted and drawn angels before and I always wondered how their wings actually work and how they connect to their spines. It's not like birds, or bats, because they have wings instead of arms, but angels have arms as well. And how do you operate them separately from your arms? However they do it, they need arms if they are going to carry bread around!
So, when in doubt, use someone else's idea of an angel, and here it is: a bronze angel statue, perhaps just alighting from the skies with her precious armful of heavenly baguettes. I allowed myself a little metallic paint for this one - Setacolor for fabrics, by Pebeo. The sky fabric came like that - an inspired choice, don't you think?!
It was Kathy who decided to do a song by Elton John, and she chose Tiny Dancer. I just love this image, which she has carefully built using parts of a fabric that says calm seas, so there is a terrific shadow of the dancer in the reflection on the wet sand. I must look up this song and give it a listen.
And now for something a little different. Do you remember Cabaret? The first time I heard Joel Grey singing "Money, money, money, money", I was reminded how musicals just get it right sometimes. It's such a truism that money makes the world go around that it's almost boring. But the song makes it funny and entertaining and dark all at the same time. And the lyrics are so clever as well.
My husband travels a lot in Africa, so he has a collection of small bills that are not worth very much at all. As it happens, he had several that happened to be in our 35th anniversary colours of coral and emerald green, so of course I had to use them. I wanted to put one of the new $50 bills in as well, for Canadian content, but would you believe that if you scan it or photocopy it, it WILL NOT print! Of course this must have something to do with preventing counterfeit notes, but it was spooky - and one of the messages I got from the two printers I tried said something about the pixels being scrambled or something. What incredible technology we have now.
Anyway, here is my piece. None of the bills is complete, so there is no point in trying to print and spend them! Love the elephant and the rhino, and yes, I did have to check that the world is going around the right way.
The last piece was vaguely familiar to me, but it was a treat to listen to it properly. What a ghostly piece by Debussy: La Cathedral Englutie (the Submerged Cathedral). This was also printed on a laser printer. First I found a photograph of a ruined English cathedral. Then I de-saturated it (in Preview, actually - I didn't even have to open Photoshop) and bumped up the contrast to get rid of any detail in the sky, and then I printed it on a commercial fabric with an underwater pattern. There was some touch-up painting required so it didn't look like a cardboard cut-out glued onto the outside of an aquarium, and I darkened some of the solid area with a Sharpie to add more weight to the ruins. And then in went lots of tiny Nemo-type clown fish to help the building look huge.
Well, that's it for the moment. I am still thinking of how I am going to do Adagio for Strings. Sometimes you just have to let them percolate. . . .
Happy coffee time!
Susan
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