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sandra townsend donabed
collaged textiles and quilts


Artist's Statement, the Abrieviated Version

I have always sewn, a legacy from my home economics teacher mom. In addition, I have always loved to experiment with art techniques and materials, so these pages represent the merging of those two aspects of my life. Quilting came to me when I was a young mother--something that was portable, non-toxic, and could be done in odd moments between duties. I had something to work on as I would sit in carpool lines, wait at trombone lessons, or hunker down in the car during rainy soccer Saturdays. It was my outlet during hard times, a way to release tough emotions as much as a way to get silly or record the minutiae of daily life. Lately I have been branching out, doing collages on paper as well as quilting them. Also I have returned to some mono and block printing as well as my old nemisis, painting, so I have updated my pages to show what's happening.
Sandy
Sandy in her English Crow costume


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Photographic Collage Quilts, Part 1 of my new directions

Multiple Choices
Keene State
Sticks
Multiple Choices
Keene State Triptych
Self Portrait with Sticks
A school was being demolished just down the street from me so I went into the construction site on a series of three Sundays when the guys were not there to make me wear a hard hat and squash my hair. I ended up with 350 pictures of the demolition and did this fabric collage by printing the photos directly onto muslin. I call it "Multiple Choices" after the errant history test paper fluttering in one of the piles of junk (right hand side, towards the center).
I was asked to do a triptych for a New Hampshire College using the photographic collage technique and this is the result. I spent one whole day taking pictures of the campus, even mountain views from the roof of the student center, and brought them home to get to work.
As part of a sculpture class assignment we were to do a self-portrait out of paper mache,and hated the structure I built- no matter what I did it just became more hideous. Finally I took close-up digital photos of the piece through all the holes I had cut, printed them on satin and this is the result. I then threw out the awful sculpture!
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Paper Collages, Part 2 of my new directions

BumRoll
Dressing Up
Formations
Bum Roll
Dressing Up
Formations
All of these collages are 24" square and made with vintage dress pattern backgrounds collaged to stretched canvas. Also I use my own photographs, or sometimes scans of old family photos, printed on transparent papers and also collaged down. Each piece has some form of embroidery and embellishment on the surface. There are many more which are on another page you can get to by clicking on the Collage Gallery


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Paintings and Prints, Part 3 of the new directions

Beach
Corn Dyptich
Loxahatchee River
Beach
Corn Dyptich
Loxahatchee River
These paintings are the result of me trying to break some artistic blocks. Left to right, 'Beach' is only 12" square, while the 'Corn Dyptich' is two 12" paintings with block prints incorporated in the center. The third painting, representing a fateful canoe trip that sent my Nikon to the bottom of the river, is a painting with an actual printing block attached. I imagine these would all qualify better as collages rather than paintings because I just can't keep adding 'stuff' to the surface. I took a class called 'Extreme Painting and Block Printing' and it freed me completely from being too literal. There are many more which are on another page you can get to by clicking here: Paintings and Other Stuff


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boring old resume
more quilts
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lots more collages
paintings and misc. stuff
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