I find mixed-media work so joyful and fun to create because the work and the story develop as you play with the piece. After a free-form base layer is applied, marks and shapes begin to create ideas and stories. You sit with it, stare at it, over the course of days, or weeks, even months. New ideas emerge over time, and the next layer is added. “Ruby” was actually two pieces prior to becoming this one. The base layer is a multi-media collage made of writing and painted papers I created. I over-worked my original idea. In my effort to salvage the piece, I added an acrylic painting over top that transformed the style and feel of the piece. But this layer also ended up over-worked, with muddied colors. It was the perfect opportunity to use the overpainting technique, used at times by artists such as Gerhard Richter. Using a thick layer of cream-colored acrylic, I covered most of the original work. The few areas where previous layers shown through presented an entirely different story that required new design elements and materials. In the past I have not been a fan of 3-D elements in paintings; the magic of a skilled painting after all is that 2-D marks create a very real illusion of a 3-D space. But this piece called for a 3-D nest-like feature. It is made of coffee-soaked glassine paper, and thread. The text is from a book handed down by my grandparents; it is from the 1938 edition of the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (pictured below). My copy is bound in leather, embossed with gold, with carved jade embedded in the cover. I’ve always loved the look and feel of the cover and pages. The floral sketch and definitions included in “Ruby” add a reverent, timeless element. It also reminds me of the cataloging phenomena begun in the 1700’s by Carl Linnaeus, with his publication of Species Plantarum. The piece has some loose and some tight boundaries, while also conjuring an appreciation nature. Overall I love it’s sense of movement, space and freedom.