bone play

It's just a month since I posted here and I feel the urge to communicate. I've been busy with workshops and a wonderful creative outflow, so much that it's hard to settle on one thing to share. I've been spending a good deal of time organizing my materials (i.e., my crazy collections of pods, bones, etc.), updating records, and going through my older art pieces. All of this gives me a rich sense of how the art is evolving and what is coming through, and I expect I will describe that more in upcoming posts. Since I've been handling so many bones lately, what I want to impart today is some of the energy that I feel with them.  I am thus focusing on some of the recent pieces that incorporate bones. Note that the photos are working shots--not final documentary images--and in some cases they show not-quite-finished pieces. The urge to share some of what I'm playing with overrides the desire to wait for better images.
PLEASE-- if you have any kind of reaction to this work (how do they --or any one particular piece--make you feel? what do they make you think of? etc.), please do share with me. I am hungry for that kind of feedback about what the work brings to others.

TOUCHING SHARPNESS.  11" x 14" Dimensional collage, incorporating fish bone spines. (This piece can also be viewed upside down.)

AUTUMN MIGRATION.  12" square. Dimensional collage: Fish tails, fish bones, paint.   A friend looked at this and (without prompting about what I named it or thought about it) said it made her think of standing in the prairie grasses at just this time of year.

BIRD LEADING THE WAY. (2 versions). 8" square. Dimensional collage: Fish bones, snake bones, bobcat bones, mica, paint. 

THE HAUGHTY QUEEN. 12” high, 10” wide. Assemblage: Handmade paper, fish bones, tree fungus, fish scales, paper-covered stone (the last three materials are not visible on this side of the piece).

(click on the images for a full view.)
Left: THE ASPIRANT. 15" high. Assemblage: Fish bones and handmade paper are visible here. Since the photo was taken, kelp "arms" have been added.
Right: PATTERNING. 20" high. Assemblage: Deer (?) vertebrae, handmade paper, cotton thread.

CHURCH CHOIR. 5" high. Assemblage: deer bones covered with red-dyed gut; rose petal beads. In the final version of this piece, the figures are mounted on a tree fungus.

ANGEL CHORUS. 6" high, 12" wide. Assemblage: Tree cross section, deer (?) vertebrae, clay beads, snail shells. (Can't wait for a better photo of this one!)

FEELING THE COSMOS. 4" x 6"  Dimensional collage: Handmade paper, snake bones, fish bone, shell.