Dear Everyone ~
I was first introduced to Denise Fiedler and her beguiling collage cards back in 2016 by my postal muse, Alyson Kuhn. I was immediately smitten with Denise’s sense of whimsy and the profusion of textures in her painted paper collage images. I have stocked her cards, and restocked them, and added more designs… for almost a “decade of Denise” now. So, needless to swoon, when I heard that she’d created four collages for this year's holiday stamps from the USPS, I was over the moon!
Alyson bought Denise’s Holiday Cheer stamps on Saturday, September 13, the first day they were available. She had hand-folded an envelope for Denise in advance, added three of Denise’s four stamps (in the spirit of ’xcess!), and had the envelope handsomely hand-cancelled.
We are delighted to be able to share with Everyone selected bits—the skinny and the snippy— of Alyson’s rambling conversation with Denise.
AK:
What was your background material for your collage bits? They look very ‘layery’.
DF:
I painted on pages of a vintage horticulture book with many illustrations. I used both gouache and acrylic paint, because I feel there’s more luminosity in paint than flat art paper—and the print offers more texture.
AK:
What size did you work at? And were your final artworks digital?
DF:
My original artworks were basically my final artworks. My ‘tweaks’ were manual—for example, I was asked to change the color of the pear, which had been a different shade of green, so I cut a new one. The images are 8 x 10, and that is what I provided to Derry Noyes, my USPS art director. It’s appropriate, being a very hands-on person, that I wasn’t involved in anything mechanical. And finding out that my images would also be notecards was a nice surprise!
AK:
The images are great at notecard size—and on nice toothy cardstock, might I add. So, just painted papers and glue and scissors—and your ‘collage degree’ in visualizing the papery possibilities in everything!
DF:
That’s it. I have Japanese scissors, some French, and some British. I used tiny ones for the cardinal’s crown, and longer scissors for the more elongated lines.
AK:
And what about the themes for your four stamps? Did you get to decide what they would be?
DF:
I did get to decide. Besides all being natural themes, I used red and green to unify the set. Originally, the wreath wasn’t included. I had done a boot, which apparently wasn’t as universally appealing as the other images, so I had the opportunity to do the wreath instead.
AK:
I guess we could say that your boot was given the boot! We’ve gotten Derry’s permission to show the boot here. And then when the art directors saw the wreath… they were wreathed in smiles! What can you tell us about your wreath?
DF:
A holly wreath is nostalgic for me, because we always had a holly wreath—no, I didn’t make it!—on our front door, with a big red bow. For me, it was a natural association with the holidays.
AK:
Let’s talk about ribbons while we’re at it.
DF:
We associate ribbons so much with the holidays, so the ribbon on the amaryllis was a nice alternative to a pot. It gave the image a looser feeling than if they were planted in a pot. And they looked like a gift. Ribbons are dressy without being fussy. As you know, I put bows on bouquets, and also on cats and dogs.
AK:
And what about the fruits and greens stamp?
DF:
I always look forward to eating pears and clementines during the holidays and to using them as decor. I love the structure of pomegranates—I love the little crown. And the red of pomegranates is exceptionally beautiful. I don’t really have any Christmas decorations except for pine branches and walnuts and other seasonal stuff.
AK:
We can’t leave out the cardinals, who are almost full-size on the cover of the current USA Philatelic, which, I have to say, made a fabulous backless envelope! I had lovely red and also olive-y green cover stock on hand for the back, but I had recently deconstructed the Sensuous Stationery issue of Uppercase, and decided that its front cover made a magical back. This is one of my favorite backless envelopes of the year!
DF:
I think I need to make one, or two! I gave the cardinals a ‘finishing’ treatment. Once the red paint was dry, I hand-painted using a woodblock with dark gray paint to create a feathery texture on the wings.I added texture on the leaves as well, using the woodblock. Paint first, then cut.
Charmed and inspired by Denise’s collage work in general and her recent stellar-at-stamp-size collages for the USPS, I invited her to “test snip” some Cambridge Imprint (of which she is a particular fan) and Carta Varese scraps for holiday cards that would be a crafty complement to her stamps. She agreed, I mailed, she collaged… and look what she mailed back!
So, we are delighted to debut our Fiedler Certified Crafty Collage Sampler. May you be enveloped in a festive frenzy of collaging creativity!
Ready, snip, glue, send, Bari
PS:
Last week I had a lovely voice-to-voice chat with Denise. We’ve been e-communing for years and this was our first ever phone call. It was delightful to say the least. One of the many things we chatted about was our shared love of paper, collage, and teaching. Next week, we will reveal our debut teaching collaboration. For now, I will say this: Save the date! Saturday, December 6.
PSS:
We’ve added three new designs to our Fiedler repertoire which you can see below and here.
