description

I love old portraits; especially ones in nice old gaudy frames. I am reminded of those old horror and mystery movies (or maybe it was Scooby Doo) where in the hero is wandering through the parlor of a strange mansion or castle, unaware that he is being watched by a portrait on the wall of Baron von Hamburger. The eyes in the paintings move…watching the protagonist as his snoops through the room. Well, I’ve always liked the idea of 2 dimensional portraits reaching out into the “real world”. Using old frames, old photographs (or paintings), along with doll parts and other three dimensional objects we will give the illusion that are portraits are trying to join the fun in the 3rd dimension. Can you blame them? How boring to stuck behind glass in a rectangle all the live-long-day.

What a Relief!

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bio

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class photo 4

       supply list

• Any and all items on the supply list will be made available at www.theartistsnook.net/shop Aves Apoxie Clay ¼ lbs or more
• A couple of gaudy old frames (nothing larger than 8”x10”, but could be as small as you like)
• Photographs, tintypes, paintings, photocopies that will fit inside your frames
• Doll parts, toy figurines, various body parts from models, that will roughly correspond in size to the
• photographs or paintings you’re using.
• Variety of found objects that correspond with the size of the frame. These will be used on the frame as well as around the interior portrait. Could literally be anything.
• Bits of ephemera, text, and other paper images.
• Paint Brushes (a couple small detail brushes, and some cheap brushes (1/2 inch to 1 inch in size)
• Wire a couple of different gauges
• Basic Tools…pliers, scissors,
• Paint (acrylic…preferably Golden brand…either fluid or heavy body will work)
• Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold
• Nickel Azo Yellow
• Black (Mars or Carbon)
• Titanium White
• Pthalo Green (blue shade)
• Dioxazine Purple
• Van Dyke Brown
• Paynes Gray
• Quinacridone Crimson
• Sand paper or sanding sponge
• Adhesives.
• Dap Kwik Seal for kitchen and bath -White. Should say paintable or water base acrylic or latex.
• Clear Liquid Nails or E6000
• Optional Things
• Mica.
• Transparencies with images on them
• Mesh or bits of fabric, string etc.
• Optional Paints
• Interference Colors (blue, violet or any others)
• Iridescent colors (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Copper, etc)
• Micaceous Iron Oxide
  
  
• Optional Tools
• Heat gun
• Dremel with cut-off wheel

printable version

Michael deMeng is an assemblage artist whose work is heavily influenced by Latin American art forms such as retablos, ex votos, and milagros. Born in Southern California, he now works and resides in Missoula "the cultural Mecca of Montana". He exhibits and teaches throughout the world, promoting the alchemy of transforming trash to treasure.

Artist Statement: My work is about transformations. It is about the transformation of the common into the sacred. Discarded materials find new and unexpected uses in my work; they are reassembled and conjoined with unlikely components, a form of rebirth from the ashes into new life and new meaning. These assemblages are metaphors for the evolutions and revolutions of existence: from life to death to rebirth, from new to old to renewed, from construction to destruction to reconstruction. These forms are examinations of the world in perpetual flux, where meaning and function are ever changing.