Larger work

I was starting to feel a little limited by the smallness of the SoulCollage card... many of the images I was clipping out simply would not fit on a 5" x 8" card. I took a trip to the art supply store and bought some bristol board, which allowed me to put this piece together. I even got three-dimensional and added some bling to the board.

Every year at our company's holiday party, they have an art gallery where employees exhibit their work. This year, I'm still feeling a bit timid about it, but I hoping that next year, I'll have some things I'd like to show. Perhaps I'll take my own artwork's advice. It's time to let nothing contain me.

More collages

This card was inspired by our wedding this summer. I can't remember the last time I felt so much love among such a large crowd of people. It was something I'll never forget.


This is a darker one. Making this card was kind of like having a dream - you are not sure, when you wake up, what it meant, but it seems somehow significant.

Collage series

I was inspired to start making SoulCollage cards by Redondo Writer, and got some blank matboards and started clipping and pasting. I'm not sure if what I am making will ever turn into a deck of cards, but I certainly enjoy seeing what patterns emerge. I'll post the photos here...


This is the first one I made. I call it "e-merge". I was thinking of my grandma as I made it. One of the things I got from her is my name, Eleanore. She had a little Victorian style plaque of the letter E that got passed down to me, and I keep it by my bed. It's funny to think of all the meanings that "E" has come to have, post email and e-commerce and so forth. Grandma was always very insistent that we spell our name with a final E, so that people will pronounce the O as a long O and not say El-a-"ner".


This one is called "akimbo", which is one of my favorite words. Looking at the world just a bit askance is important to do now and then, don't you think?


Here is "believe", which I made to encourage myself to take the plunge into making and sharing art.

Cheers, Mike

Today I heard that a man I worked with for almost ten years has died suddenly. He was laid off a couple of months ago and no one had seen him since. Mike was an outsider who was proud to be that way. He grew up in a strict Mennonite family and prided himself on his free thinking and anarchistic beliefs. He was one of the smartest people I know, able to pull up philosophies - and the quotes and book titles to amplify them - at the drop of a hat. He lived life fully, enjoying regular trips to Mexico (thus the tequila) and fast rides on his motorcycle. He had a beautiful wife and two young children. I'm so sorry that they will not have more time to learn from him.