My first limited-edition paper sculpture

I've only completed one AP of Common
Cliff Dragon--Male so far. Here he is at his
August Art Night show debut--just before
his new owner took him home!

Common Cliff Dragon--Male is a small, relatively simple piece, but it breaks new ground for me. It is my first-ever limited edition of a multiple-original paper sculpture.

I've been working up to this for a bit more than a year and a half, since the first edition in the Mail Piece Project. My emphasis area for my undergraduate art major was printmaking, and most of my earlier fine art career was taken up with producing and helping to sell reproduction prints by myself and other artists, so the idea of a limited edition has never been strange to me.

During the first several years of doing paper sculpture, however, I couldn't see how I could possibly create a limited edition of them. Then I started the Mail Piece Project. Those pieces were more pop-up than paper sculpture, but as I worked on them I began to see more clearly how I could incorporate another "first love," ink drawing, into the process, and make printouts with archival paper and ink.

L-R: The White Dragon (2007), A Nest in the Wildwood (2008-9), Denizen of the Winter Trees (2009), and
Patterns in Turquoise (2011), the final piece in the "Snowflake Dragons-TNG" series.

To explore further, I needed a subject I knew well--it is only helpful to take on so many challenges at once. A dragon was a natural choice for me.

My first-ever paper sculptures, The White Dragon (2007) and A Nest in the Wildwood (2008-9) featured dragons. When I was figuring out a pattern prototype I started with a dragon in Denizen of the Winter Trees (2009). When I was figuring out how to manipulate color in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, I did my first experiments with "The Next Generation" of "Snowflake Dragons"(2011).

"Body" drawing

So it was back to the dragon-drawing board for this new effort. I started out knowing only that the image area should be about 5X7" and the subject should be a dragon. Then I let my pencil think for me, for a while.

The result was a pencil drawing of a dragon crouched on a fairly sheer cliff face.  I used tracing paper to trace first the wings, then a full view of the cliff face (no void, even though that meant much of what I drew would eventually be obscured by the body and wings--I wanted a certain flexibility in positioning). The original pencils provided the base for the body's ink lines.

I inked the tracings and scanned them, then added color using Adobe Illustrator and my new Wacom Bamboo Tablet. As I worked with the colors, the idea of a neutralized gray-green cliff background and splashy red-and-white coloration for the dragon began to develop. But what could possibly induce a species to develop the kind of coloration that would make it stand out brilliantly from its background?

Wings, with color added

Yes, I know: dragons aren't a real species. But if they were, they'd follow the same evolutionary patterns as real species, and I'm deeply enough steeped in science to know that most creatures--even those at the top of the food chain, such as tigers, leopards, and wolves--generally have some level of camouflage that helps them visually blend into their surroundings.

The main exceptions I could think of were birds and fish. In some of those species, the males display brilliant colors, both to attract a mate and to decoy enemies away from nests. One look at this dragon's wings should tell you I see him as more bird than fish! Goes along with the whole "feathered dinosaur" thing, in my mind.

Okay, so now I had a "logical" rationale for making him the colors I wanted to: he's in mating plumage. Maybe the rest of the year he goes around in drab gray-green, but during this one season he sports a complimentary color scheme like Christmas. And just to make sure the rationale is clear, I added a border and "scientific" information about him (If anyone reading this knows Latin, please check my usage!).

Even sporting red feathers, my cliff dragon was too well
camouflaged against the left-hand background.
I gave him deeper shadows in the background at right.

There still was the matter of the cliff rocks, and I went back and forth on this for a while. Even with all the red on him, he still tended to blend into the background a bit more than was helpful for an artwork (although I'm already extrapolating what kind of predator might prey on common cliff dragons. He wouldn't want to stand out so much that Dragon Eaters could even more easily spot him, or it could be a very short, unhappy mating season!)

My husband didn't care about Dragon Eaters. "I'd make the background completely black," he said. "That'll make him 'pop!'"

I tried a really dark gray screen overlay over the rocks, to see if I could live with it, but I couldn't dismiss thoughts of the Dragon Eaters, and it didn't look enough like the kind of lighting and background colors that worked with this dragon's coloration to suit me. Finally, I came to the compromise of giving him darker shadows to outline some key "edges." That way, I wouldn't feel required to put a pin through his back and claim he was a collected specimen in a shadowbox.

Scroll up and check to see if you think the darker shadows did the trick!

Finally, after all this, I had something I could cut out, sculpt, and assemble, sort of in the way I did with the roses I showed a few weeks back. The rocks are 3-D, as well as the dragon. To me, the sculpting is the most fun part, because it's a little like making magic happen.

There's only "AP #1" (the first Artist's Proof) so far. My little cliff-dweller is possibly still in development. I don't know if there will need to be more proofs (I sold AP #1 on its first outing, before my husband could see it), nor have I figured out an edition size. Even when I can print pre-made flat images, I still have to cut out the pieces, sculpt them all, and assemble each one by hand--a fairly time-consuming process, even though I can do it while watching Nature or Bones on TV. Perhaps I can take a reading on some of these questions if people leave comments (please? I'd love some input!).

Announcing the Spring Mail Piece!

After a number of frustrating delays, the Spring Mail Piece has finally started arriving in subscribers' mailboxes!

The "Sakura Panel" is part of the Spring Mail Piece.  It
features a quote by Rainer Maria Rilke.

The Spring Mail Piece is the second of a five-part series.  It is a multiple original--that is, a limited-edition print, in this case created digitally using archival-quality inkjet inks printed on acid-free paper.  Because the piece is assembled from three different drawings and an added piece, there is no single "original," from which the prints are reproduced.  The print itself, complete with an added piece, is the orignal.

The USPS provided the
 stamp design element.

I started the Mail Piece Project in January.  It is a conceptual artwork, resulting from a three-way collaboration between me (creating the images and assembling the pieces), the United States Postal Service (which provided the stamp--an integrated part of the design--and adds its own marks in the process of delivery), and the subscribers (who financed the project, and who complete each piece when they open, look at, and react to their unique Mail Piece original).

The address panel and back of each mail piece must be drawn foot-to-foot,
to look right on the finished piece.  The pansies among the rocks under the
forsythia on the address panel of the Spring Mail Piece were inspired by the
stamp chosen for this part of the series.

The elements in the Spring Mail Piece came from a variety of sources.  The pansies on the stamp inspired part of the design on the address panel.  The stamp, not totally coincidentally, was officially issued from right here in Kansas City, last June 22.  It is the Love: Pansies in a Basket stamp, and its design is taken from Hallmark Cards, Inc's all-time best-selling greeting card.  The card was created from a watercolor by Dorothy Maienschein; Derry Noyes designed the stamp.  The quotation and poem came from the "Quote Garden" website (if you like them, there are plenty more on the site!).

Inside of the Spring Mail Piece a pop-up section accents Persephone's flowery
Greek meadow.  This Mail Piece features the Persephone myth as part of its
spring seasonal theme.

Each of the Mail Pieces is proving to require about 5-6 weeks' time for development and production.  In just a few weeks I'll be starting research for the Summer Mail Piece.  If all goes well, it will arrive in subscribers' mailboxes in early July.

PHOTO CREDITS: The image of the Love: Pansies in a Basket stamp is courtesy of the United States Postal Service.  All other photos in this post were taken by Jan Sherrell Gephardt, of her own original artwork. 

An Invitation to Joint the Mail Piece Project

How would you like to help me with a new art project?

Over the course of 2011, I plan to create a 5-part, limited-edition work—with your help, I hope. I call it the Mail Piece Project (MPP).

I have been thinking about what I get in my mailbox: how impersonal the mass mailings are, compared with “old-fashioned” hand-written letters. The MPP is a conceptual art project that combines elements from both. It is a limited-edition multiple original (fine art print), neither “mass” in nature, nor a singular object.

There will be five designs, for different parts of the year: New Year, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Mailings will start on the Lunar New Year, at the end of January, and continue seasonally, after that.

Each design will be a two-sided, tri-folded self-mailer, and each will be coordinated with a particular commemorative stamp issue.*

I think of it as a three-part "collaboration."  The work will start with me, of course. I’ve included scans of a sketch and a finished panel in this post.

The U.S. Postal Service will continue, working on my beginning via postmarks, bar codes, or other marks added during processing. **

You can be the third part of the process, if you want to—by helping finance it, and also by viewing it, for I believe no art is a “finished product” until someone new sees it.  I mainly want to cover expenses, so I've set the price at $6.  To sign up, email me at jsg4edu@gmail.com.

When you sign up, you will be given a print number. Throughout the year, all your prints will have that number. By the end of the year you should have a complete set, personalized for you.

Before you pay me anything, I need a head count of who is interested in this venture. It is my hope to reach around 50 people, to keep the cost low. My sign-up deadline is January 22, 2011.  Send a check to me at Artdog Studio, 4318 Rainbow Blvd. Suite #143, Kansas City, KS 66103, or use the PayPal button below.

As you can see, I’m already at work on the first design. Sign up now, before all the art is gone! Depending on how hard this is, I might not do another project next year.

*Note: if you are not located in the United States, you still can participate. Email me at jsg4edu@gmail.com, and we’ll work special pricing out for you. As a bonus, so you won’t miss out on the commemorative stamps, I’ll mail the MPP to myself first, and then repackage it to send to you.

**Further note: people who know the work of the United States Postal Service know that it is not always kind to mailed pieces! I have a remedy planned, if your art arrives in a “body bag,” so please don’t throw it away.

Here are the other commemorative stamps I plan to use, for (L-R) Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter.

Here is a PayPal option for a $6 (USD) subscription for "Mail Piece Project 2011":