The beginning of Island Queen's image-making

Today I begin to tell the story of Island Queen Images, and I hope it inspires others to create!
"Genevieve's Conscience" is one of the first images I made after my initial "aha moment" at the beginning of this phase of my artist's career.

It began with an old book found in Nana's storehouse -- a great name for a shop someday, I think -- but I digress. My mother gave me this book, given her by her mother. I will dig it out today and take its photo in total for the next posting, but it will be difficult to show how fabulous it truly is. It was an old copy of the Congressional Record. A young lady of the late 19th century, in the fashion of the day, took this old book and made a scrapbook of it. She pasted in poems, church literature, copies of etchings and watercolors, ads from magazines and newspapers, and greeting cards. Some of the pages were works of art in and of themselves!

I began to turn the pages (carefully) and explore what I saw. The textures literally jumped off the page! There were layers of color and line, just the way my mind was seeing the art I wanted to create. I scanned a few images and realized this was to be the basis for my art. My collection of old documents and other ephemera began the day I got to know Nana's book.

Genevieve (my name for her) was an actress of her day, and the young lady who clipped her portrait had saved it and several others and added them to the scrapbook. I layered her image, some ancient music staves, a few ads, and other miscellaneous images, all against the background of the inside cover of the book itself, complete with faded ink signatures of the scrapbook-maker. Voila -- "Genevieve's Conscience"!