Vintage – Dayna J Collins

Brooklyn Travel Journal

We spent the last two weeks of September in Brooklyn, New York, so of course I logged our trip with a Salvage Collage junk journal.

I didn’t make my own journal, but used one created by my friend Laurie at Black Dog Studio. It came with a nice variety of papers, including some heavy watercolor paper, so I was able to adhere all kinds of papers, post cards, street fliers, and whatever paper materials I could scrounge. It was a bit more challenging on this trip because during a pandemic, there isn’t as much print material as usual. But being the scrounger and junker that I am, I managed to cobble together a pretty interesting journal.

We rented a tiny Airbnb apartment in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. I set up my make do studio on a tiny desk in the corner of the tiny bedroom with a nice view of the fire escape and the Manhattan skyline in the distance.

I hunted and gathered each day, my piles of possible fodder growing and expanding, and I used the bed as a place to sort.

Every night after a day of exploring Brooklyn (or Manhattan), I returned to our apartment, where I cut and pasted the scraps I gathered during the day, into my journal. The journal began to take on a life of its own. I didn’t keep a chronological travelogue, or even write about our days. I just ripped, cut, and glued, creating a collaged journal with visual reminders of our first big trip in three years.

On our return trip, we turned a two hour layover in San Francisco into a three day layover (so I could see the Joan Mitchell exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). My travel journal just kept growing, setting up my studio on the desk in the corner of our hotel room.

Salvage Collage: Vintage Hardware Style

Many months ago I was invited by Becky, one of the owners of Vintage Hardware in Astoria (on the Oregon Coast), if I would consider having a show in their Pop Up Gallery. I enthusiastically replied with a great big YES. Here are some photos of why I love this store and why I said yes.

The show was scheduled for July . . . and in July, we were all in the middle of the pandemic and things were closed down and people were hunkered inside, so we crossed our fingers and rescheduled for September. By the time September rolled around, things were starting to open (with limited hours, but open nevertheless). It was time to hang the show.

We hung the show on a Friday and on Saturday was the monthly Astoria Art Walk. It was never very busy, but friends came, family came, and shoppers and art lovers stopped in. I even sold several of my book board Salvage Collages during the afternoon.

The show is up through October 4. Check in with Vintage Hardware before visiting as their hours are limited right now.

Funky Junkyard Birds: A New Flock Has Landed

It is no secret that I am a collector of worn out and tossed aside objects, the rustier, grittier, and grimier, the better. If those objects are scratched, dented, and beat up, my heart skips a beat. Every couple of years, I feel the tug to create a new batch of my Funky Junkyard Birds. I pull out vintage tins and pieces of metal that I’ve been squirreling away over the months, and begin selecting which pieces will be used for making my metal found object birds.

Although I’ve been a collector for years, the idea for creating metal birds came in 2010 when I took Leighanna Light’s Birds Gone Wild class. I was immediately smitten and Leighanna gave me her blessing to make my version of the birds, saying, “Yes, of course, sell away!”

I started my latest batch of birds in February, with an offer from my husband to cut out and flatten the vintage tins and cut out the bird parts: wings, heads, pants, shirts, and bodies. I selected which tins I wanted to use, drew shapes onto the metal, and then turned them over to Howard to cut and sand the razor sharp edges. After a couple of weeks, I had beautiful piles of bird body parts.

In March, the auditions began. This involved combing through my basement stockpiles, opening cupboards, pulling out drawers, digging through bins, and pawing through boxes. I pulled out various found objects that might serve as a body, then tried out different heads. Personas began to take shape; pants or legs were added; an array of wings posed; balancing shape, color, and design. Unique bits and crazy finishing trinkets added to the emerging personalities of each bird.

Once the birds were Frankenstined together, a process that took several weeks, each bird was given a name, photographed, and are now making their debut.

Here are a smattering from the 25 I created over the past four months.

Funky Junkyard Birds
Ruby Ann
by Dayna J. Collins

Funky Junkyard Birds
Poppy
by Dayna J. Collins

Funky Junkyard Birds
Maverick
by Dayna J. Collins

Funky Junkyard Birds
Margo
by Dayna J. Collins

Funky Junkyard Birds
J. L. Munkres
by Dayna J. Collins

Funky Junkyard Birds
Evangeline
by Dayna J. Collins

Funky Junkyard Birds
Daisy
by Dayna J. Collins

Funky Junkyard Birds
Crawford
by Dayna J. Collins

Funky Junkyard Birds
Cooper
by Dayna J. Collins

Funky Junkyard Birds
Beckett
by Dayna J. Collins

Funky Junkyard Birds
Beatrice
by Dayna J. Collins

Funky Junkyard Birds
Barnaby
by Dayna J. Collins

Funky Junkyard Birds
Allie
by Dayna J. Collins

Funky Junkyard Birds
Whitfield
by Dayna J. Collins

Salvage Collage: Obsessed With Circles and Grids

I am excited to announce that I will be having a Salvage Collage mixed media art exhibit at Guardino Gallery in August of 2019. I have already started working on a series of collages for the show, but somewhere along the way I became obsessed with grids. And circles. And circle grids. I have purchased circle punches ranging from teeny tiny to jumbo sized. All of my Salvage Collage pieces for this show are created from deconstructed, decaying, vintage, falling apart books. Here’s a peek at a recent piece I worked on in my studio last week. This one is being created using book scraps and the completed collage will be mounted onto a book cover. (You can see some circles have crept into this piece……)

My fascination with grids goes back a number of years, so when I started cutting out little blocks of color from discarded and deconstructed books, it wasn’t surprising that I started to create grids.

After cutting out a variety of squares, I started experimenting with adding shapes for more visual interest. Both of these pieces are still in the auditioning stage, but once I start gluing, I will fine tune the final composition.

It was a short leap from squares to circles and that is when my obsession kicked into high gear.

And so it goes. Ripping, tearing, punching, repeat. Periodic updates on my project can be found on my Instagram page: DaynaLovesArt.

Scrounged Beauty: The Opening

Here we are the day of our show opening, stopping by for a final sneak peek since we hadn’t yet seen our scrounged letters hanging above the word beauty. We loved it. We spent the day tromping all over Astoria, took a short rest, then returned at 5:00 to celebrate our opening for the rest of the evening.

Final formal photos of Stephanie and me.

Once the guests began to arrive, it was a riot of activity, laughter, fun, chatter, music, visiting, drinking, eating, and general merriment as people came and went, lingered, wandered, stopped back for another look and chat. Stephanie and I were blown away by how many of our friends drove from out of town: Seattle, Salem, Portland, and Albany.

After the last guest drifted away, a group of friends joined us for dinner across the street at Fulio’s and we lingered late into the evening, basking in the afterglow of a successful show and opening party.

Scrounged Beauty

Years of Collecting

After years of being junking partners, my friend Stephanie Brockway and I are doing a show together at RiverSea Gallery in Astoria. Both of us have shown our work at RiverSea for years, and Stephanie had a solo show there a couple of years ago. I show paintings, she shows a combination of paintings and outsider folk art. Scrounged Beauty is found object art, highlighting the best of our collections of found objects, and as some would say, junk.

Months of Auditioning

I spent months pulling things out of drawers, bins, bowls, and trays, choosing which pieces to try out on various pieces of reclaimed wood and prepared boards.

Weeks of Connecting, Titling, Signing, and Photographing

A Day of Hanging

Okay, Colin actually did the hanging, while Steph and I gallivanted around Astoria.

A Sampling of My Pieces (out of 42 I have in the show!)

“Delightful Daydreams,” by Dayna J. Collins

“Giddyup, Little One Trick Pony,” by Dayna J. Collins

“Obscured Thoughts,” by Dayna J. Collins

“A Whisper of Conspiracy,” by Dayna J. Collins

“Drawn Into Memory,” by Dayna J. Collins

“Daily Interactions,” by Dayna J. Collins

“The Tiniest Things Mean Something,” by Dayna J. Collins

“Most Expedient Route,” by Dayna J. Collins

“Painstaking Exactitude,” by Dayna J. Collins

“Traveling Side Show,” by Dayna J. Collins

“Seeing Through Shadows,” by Dayna J. Collins

“Little Time to Talk,” by Dayna J. Collins

“Untroubled By Disturbing Dreams,” by Dayna J. Collins

“Staring Into the Distance,” by Dayna J. Collins

THE SHOW

Day of the Dead: A Favorite Show

“Everything Accounted For,” by Dayna J. Collins, created December, 2016.

Guardino Gallery is presenting the 11th Annual Day of the Dead Show September 28-October 22nd. I have participated in this invitational group show for more years than I remember and it is one of my favorites. I always create found object art and this year I’m excited to share three special pieces. The inspiration is the assemblage piece I created last December for an invitational show at the Salem Public Library. Everything Accounted For was created as a response to the book titled Spare Parts, about four Hispanic high school students who entered an underwater robot competition and created their robot using spare parts. After reading the book and thinking about all of my spare parts, I created my piece; it is now hanging in our living room.

For the 2017 Dead of the Dead show I decided to replicate my bigger piece and I created three smaller pieces modeled after my 2016 show piece.

“The Accumulation of Years,” by Dayna J. Collins.

“A Life’s History,” by Dayna J. Collins.

“A Maze of Memories,” by Dayna J. Collins.

When I created my DOTD pieces, I packed them full with a wild assortment of my favorite small bits.

I also created two other assemblage pieces for the Guardino Gallery show.

“The Emptiness of the House,” assemblage piece by Dayna J. Collins.

“Little Need of Conversation,” assemblage piece by Dayna J. Collins.

The opening reception for the show is Thursday, September 28th, 6-9 pm. And it ALWAYS a good party.

Janet’s Old Cedar Chest

I walked right by the old chest dozens of times over the years. Most likely it had things stacked on top of it and I never realized what was holding up all the stacks of magazines and old boxes. About a year ago, my father-in-law had a stroke and while he was recuperating in a rehab facility, Howard and I went to the basement of Howard’s childhood home in NE Portland. We’d been downstairs many times over the past forty years, but usually just to drop some stuff off for storage. This time, the chest caught my eye, probably because there was nothing stacked on top of it. I lifted the lid and my breath caught; it was filled with things Howard’s mom had saved. Janet passed away 13 years ago, but even all the years she was alive, we never realized she had saved her treasures in this old trunk. I didn’t pull much out, other than a few things on the top, but quickly realized this was an excavation to be savored.

Several months ago when our adult kids were home, we visited Grandpa Tom. I pulled Howard aside and said, “I’d sure like to get that old chest loaded into the car while we have healthy backs to help carry it up the stairs.” Howard told his dad we were taking the chest and lickety split it was in the car. We got it home and put it in the garage. For some reason I didn’t immediately tear into it. I wanted to wait for the right time, when I could enjoy the process of peeling back the layers.

That day happened a couple months ago when my friend Tory had dropped me off after one of our outings. She knew I had the chest, she wasn’t in a hurry, and it felt like the right time. We slowly began to remove the pieces that were important to Janet. A wedding dress that belonged to Janet’s mother, bundles of letters, an old shower curtain(!), baby outfits, photographs, newspaper clippings . . . . the detritus of a life well-lived.

As we neared the bottom of the chest, I spied a pair of eyes peeking out of loosely bound tissue paper. Could it be? Janet’s childhood doll? I could barely contain myself. I was so excited, I just climbed right into the chest and unwrapped the doll. She was stuffed with straw and had no hair and marked the perfect ending to a chest full of clues of how Janet lived and loved.

Later, after leisurely going through the stacks of ephemera, Howard pulled out what he wanted to keep and I took what was left to my art studio at Mission Mill to use in my mixed media project, What’s Your Story: Real or Imagined.

Willamette Valley Open Studio Tour Returns

After a year hiatus, the Willamette Valley Open Studio Tour has returned. This is a self-guided public tour of local artist studios in Marion and Polk Counties. The tour is Saturday and Sunday, September 13-14, from 10:00 am-4:00 pm. More information is available about the tour on the website. There are 19 artist studios on the tour and the cost is only $5 for both days and all the studios. Tickets can be purchased at the Art Department, Bush Barn, and from all tour artists.

I participated in this event in both 2011 and 2012, both times when I was in my previous studio. For this event, you’ll have the opportunity to see my upstairs painting studio, my basement assemblage studio, and you’ll have the opportunity to buy art. I’ll have old as well as new oil and cold wax paintings, Funky Junkyard Birds, greetings cards, prints, reproductions of Fearless Faces, and dozens of new Curious Elements.

Limited edition giclee prints of this original oil and cold wax painting, "Spotted With Crimson," will be available for the first time. — Limited edition giclee prints of this original oil and cold wax painting, “Spotted With Crimson,” will be available for the first time.

In addition to all this art goodness, there will be one final opportunity to support my Scattered By the Wind Prayer Flag Project and purchase prayer flags at half price: only $5 each, with proceeds from the sale of the flags going to art programming at Hillcrest Youth Correctional Facility.

During the studio tour, I’m also having a studio SALE. Everything will be reduced in some way, with some things being marked down as much as 50%.

16x20 canvas reproductions of Fearless Faces, regularly $80, will be on sale for half price. Only $40 each. — 16×20 canvas reproductions of Fearless Faces, regularly $80, will be on sale for half price. Only $40 each.

Oil and cold wax block sets were $45, will be on sale for half price at $22.

I hope you’ll stop by my artful home on Saturday and Sunday and experience three floors of art. My sister will be on hand to greet you, serve you a snack and cold drink, and assist you with purchases. My husband will be in the basement to show you my downstairs found object and assemblage studio (be sure and have him open cabinets and drawers for you), and I’ll be upstairs to share my oil and cold wax painting process.

Questions? Contact me via e-mail: dayna@daynajcollins.com/curele.

PS I’m hoping to have a “Square” in place to take debit and credit cards, but cash is always preferred and appreciated.

Studio Revamp

I have two studios. The upstairs one is my painting studio, the basement one is my assemblage studio (aka junk shop). We moved into our new house (it’s an old house, 1926 era, but new to us) about 16 months ago, which allowed me to close down my one-bedroom house studio and bring everything home. Even with two studios in our new house, it wasn’t easy to consolidate everything from an entire house and put it into two spaces.

In December of 2012 I packed, sorted, boxed, donated, and sold all sorts of studio items. The former studio was filled to the brim – every room was mine to fill as I pleased: kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom, laundry room, and a tacked on shed (and the back yard, too). It was a herculean task and I couldn’t have done it without the help of friends.

Then what was boxed, needed to be put away.

It was overwhelming, but two friends came to the rescue. Sam helped moved all the boxes and Tory helped put it away.

I’m a pretty organized person, so I put most of the assemblage bits in the basement, but I also put a lot of it upstairs in my painting studio. Over the past year I’ve worked on my Curious Elements and Funky Junkyard Birds in the basement, but I was constantly running upstairs to my painting studio to comb through the bits I had put up there. And then when I was painting in the upstairs studio, I was beginning to feel claustrophobic with all the junk surrounding me.Two weeks ago I realized it was time to reorganize and move the last of the little bits to the basement and clear out some of the clutter (but not the shelves that Tory lovingly filled with my fun treasures).

After a full day of moving stuff out of my painting studio, this is how it looked: