Alley Art Resurrected!

I received a call last week asking about my bowling pins. Bowling pins? I hadn’t thought about my pins in quite some time. Alley Art was my brainchild a couple of years ago when I needed a final project for my Artist’s Way Creative Cluster. My Hubby had brought home a set of bowling pins, thinking the grandkids would enjoy playing with them. I saw those pins every day and somewhere from the whorls of my mind I came up with the idea to collage on one of the pins. From that first pin morphed the idea to collage more pins and the result was an eclectic art style that incorporates collage with 3-D mixed media using found objects and handpicked embellishments – all on the simple consistent form of a bowling pin. I got the idea that it would be fun to market the pins and came up with the name of Alley Art (it was a double play on words because at the time we were living in an old house on an alley . . .). Alley Art creations were juried into the Silverton Fine Arts Festival in 2006, and that same year, I was juried into Salem’s weekly Saturday Market. I sold pins at a couple of holiday markets and took special orders throughout the year. As my art has been zigging and zagging into different directions, I sort of put Alley Art on hold. It still has a full page on my web site, but I haven’t been actively marketing any of my creations for over a year. So when my phone rang and a friend asked about buying a pin as a 50th birthday gift, I was reminded of that “other” part of my life. I went to the basement and dug out about six pins I thought would be suitable for this friend to take as a special birthday gift. One of the pins was perfect and she purchased it on the spot. It was a reminder of this past artistic pursuit, a pursuit that gave me creative confidence to move forward and into so many different and varied directions.

If you would like to see more photos or get information on Alley Art, please visit my website.