Altered Curiosities: Assemblage Techniques and Projects

Discover a curious world of assemblage with projects that have a story to tell!

Step inside Altered Curiosities, where a wisdom tooth gets its own shrine, a honeybee lights up the room and a taxidermy eye becomes the eye in the back of your head. As author Jane Wynn shares her unique approach to mixed-media art, you'll learn to alter, age and transform odd objects into novel new works of your own creation.

Step-by-step instructions guide you in making delightfully different projects that go way beyond art for the wall—including jewelry, hair accessories, a keepsake box, a bird feeder and more—all accompanied by a story about the inspiration behind the project. You'll also learn to:

• Find your personal symbols and incorporate them into your work.
• Alter toy figures to create curious new creatures.
• Master simple soldering techniques that take you beyond the soldering iron.
• Apply beautiful patinas and etchings to brass and copper.
• Transform cast resin into pieces that look like metal.

Featuring techniques for assemblage and surface alterations never before seen in a mixed-media art book (kit-bashing, wiring, egg-shell texture, casting and more), Altered Curiosities offers a new twist on a hot topic.

A fresh variety of projects (such as hair barrettes, jewelry, a drawer pull and a bird feeder) prove that artistic assemblage and collage styles can be expressed beyond wall art.

Readers will learn a new storytelling approach to their mixed-media art. Altered Curiosities goes beyond construction techniques to help readers discover how to create a personal narrative with objects and visually tell a story, not just infuse a piece with meaning or symbolism.

Two very important things make this book stand out from the crowd of other collage, mixed-media and assemblage titles: the projects (full of oddities and the unexpected) and the techniques—several of which have never been published before. A common element of Jane Wynn's style is to find an object, break it and put it together again (sometimes more than once), and she loves using anthropomorphic associations to tell stories in her projects. Step by step, readers will learn her unique method and her sought-after techniques. Along with surface alterations (faux-aging, patinas and the use of unusual household products) Altered Curiosities teaches metal etching with rubber stamps, simple wiring to create dramatic lighting, instruction for altering simple toy figures (making two-headed animals, for instance) and more.

Jane Wynn is a mixed-media artist who exhibits throughout the United States. Working with a diversity of mediums from metals to wood, from fiber to found objects, she creates art with a curious narrative. Her work has appeared in several books and magazines, and she has been featured on Internet radio and television. Jane earned her Masters in Fine Art from Towson University and has taught foundation art classes at colleges and universities in Maryland. She currently teaches a variety of techniques in jewelry design, mixed media and assemblage art at workshops around the country.