This 20" by 30" mixed media piece, titled “The Dead Poets’ Society #1”, is perhaps the most ambitious one I have done to date using this fascinating paper technique (you can see much simpler examples on the pages that follow). This is the first piece in a series which celebrates certain of my favorite passages from poems by Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Frost, etc. (poets who are dead). Each figure has a body plate which contains a single line of the passage - couched in various design elements (see the detail below). This passage, from “Alone” by Edgar Allen Poe, is dear to my heart - and true to my life. It reads as follows:
From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
Detail

You will notice that the type is arranged in some unusual ways in order to blend into the overall “fabric” texture of the design. Since I was using an alphabet stamp set, the arrangement of the words was decided arbitrarily as I went along.

Although this article is about creating the “copper” plates on the front of these figures, and not this piece itself, I will try to give you an overview of how the piece was created.

The four “copper” plates were made first (directions later in this article). They were then layered on black Arches Cover, and then on wood pieces that I painted and sponged with acrylics in light tones too subtle to see here. The wood was then attached to strips of black corrugated which had been rubbed with metallic copper. Before attaching these two layers, I made a double-headed eye pin from copper wire and settled it into one of the grooves of the corrugated piece. The “arms” of the figures, made of copper chain, copper beads, and stoneware tube beads, were attached to these “shoulder” eye pins after the four figures were mounted to the background.

The heads were made with a hot glue technique which will be in Volume 4 of Now What?, and embellished with real copper leaves that I tooled and antiqued with a solution called “English Brown” from Modern Options. You can use Liver of Sulphur to do this also. This process turns the copper dark, and you must bring the shine back to the raised areas by sanding with very fine grit sandpaper.

The background is a piece of archival Foamcore which was spray painted with flat black, gold, and copper, and then oversprayed with Krylon black and gold webbing spray.

I have to say I really love this piece and I was hoping to have it around for inspiration as I created the others in the series. However, it must have really been lovable because it sold just a couple of days after hanging. So, doing this article puts me back in touch with it and it feels good. Future pieces in this series will be displayed in the Gallery on my website when they are finished.
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