In my last post, I talked about the cool handmade card collage I received in the mail last week from artist Annie Vought. Annie is doing a project to check and see if our regular old US postal system still works, given that we all seem to communicate only via computers and phones these days. She asked her interested blog readers to send her their snail mail addresses and in return, she would send them a handmade card in the mail. So, I sent her my info and she sent me a great postcard collage.
The image below is the “art card” that I made to send back to Annie. It is constructed from cut up pieces of a Scrabble Jr. game board, sewn back together with pearl cotton, and then embellished with a spinner and a card pocket (with cards). I even spelled out a few applicable words (using creative directions of course).
"Art Card for Annie" ©2010 Ayn Hanna, 7"x9", Re-purposed game board, spinner, cards,& thread
I am very attracted to old board games – the bright graphics, “maps”, shapes/patterns/colors, spinners, moving parts, playing pieces, cards, dice, the memories, the analytic challenges and quests involved. They are laughing warm nostalgia, toasty Saturday nights lounging around a living room with popcorn, family, and friends.
One of my fondest board game memories ever – a favorite image of my Grandma I still have in my mind’s eye today, sitting at the dining room table at her house in Sioux City, dice cup in hand, tears and giggles streaming. We used to laugh so hard we were crying (and my face actually hurt from smiling) and then laughed even harder once Grandma started snorting – we couldn’t help ourselves, we just got that silly and giddy every time we played Yahtzee.
"Art Card for Annie" (backside) ©2010 Ayn Hanna
I have long been collecting old board games (I have 15+ large boxes in the attic….and yes, it’s clear I got the “collector” gene from BOTH parents) with plans to re-purpose them into art pieces. I’ve been thinking about ways to do this for years (yup, I’m a planner too) and I have some good ideas to explore, but just haven’t jumped into all of that yet until now.
Annie’s use of paper cut letters and old postcard collages inspired me to try out one of my ideas – cutting up the game board and re-assembling it like a quilt, embellishing with the game parts and pieces. It’s a start at playing with these old board games and exploring how I can use them in my artwork.
We’ll see where this leads to next. For now, I’ll be putting this in the mail and then seeing what (thoughts, ideas, experiments, or possibly even more cards) comes next. It’s fun to have a new artist pen-pal!
What great ideas. I am thinking about some silly game that my niece Sissy and I played when she was 3. And of playing Monopoly at our cabin with my sister and my niece and I was cheating…and did not know it because I cannot read directions, or add. Of course we all died laughing.