Lily

A friend gave me a flea-market-find jewellry box with a picture frame in the lid. It seemed like a fun chance to experiment with three-dimensional layers in a collage! Lily is the result.

Jeanne

 A friend gave me some leftover fabric, and I realized it was destined to end up in a collage. Jeanne is the result.

Jeanne Hebling was a French actress who starred in the early French films of the 1920s and 30s. However, this gal proved to be more than a pretty face during WWII, when she joined the resistance and used her apartment to host meetings and harbor Allied agents. After the war she moved to the US and ended her film career.

She is drawn with ink and watercolor pencil in purple shades to compliment the purple, teal, black and silver fabric pattern. Other details are created with silver gel pen, acrylic, and a sequin. She measures a compact 10x15cm and is completed with a silver colored frame.

Onze Lieve Vrouwekathedral

Antwerp, Belgium

Onze Lieve Vrouwekathedral and friend.

For how close Belgium is, I have spent relatively little time exploring the neighboring country. My main experience there was when we passed through on my first visit to the Netherlands. We were supposed to have a connecting train in Brussels that would take us to Holland, but when we got there the track was closed due to a gas leak. In order to get around the leak, all the would-be train passengers were packed onto buses where we stood for the over an hour bus ride to Antwerp. Except some of the roads winding through the small towns were also closed, prompting detours across unpaved alleys riddled with potholes that made sure we got to know our fellow passengers a little better. I held my breath that the overloaded bus wouldn't sink into the deep mud.