Altered Calendar - September 1963

 For the latest monthly round of the altered calendar round robin, I once again had the book 1963 to work in.  Please see my previous pages HERE.

When you google September 1963 to find stories or ideas, sadly you learn about the horrible bombing of the church in Alabama where 4 your girls died.  I debated creating a spread about that for a few minutes, but decided I was not well suited for such a serious topic in my art.  Instead I went with the two other most common google search responses – vintage magazines and the new fall TV shows.

My first spread is a nod to K’s car crazed husband with the cover of the Sept 1963 Motor Trend.   yes –it says 1964 cars on the cover – because September is when the new cars come out!

 Inside I showed a spoof car ad from MAD magazine from the same year.  It talks about how useless you feel when they do come out with the NEW cars, hence a marketing ploy to see you a 1963 and ¾’s car – in this ad – a re-issue of the Edsel. Yuk yuk.  Both pages are covered with wide packing tape to look glossy like a magazine.

  The next spread features a 1960’s era family room, probably somewhere in sunny southern California.  I wanted to do something ambitious where the TV screen  would be a window onto the next page – but had to scotch it.  So it is just a cool mid-century modern family room!  I chose the collegiate letters and the autumn leaves, two things that signify back to school and the big issue of TV guide!

Next spread has one of the new TV shows for 1963 – My Favorite Martian.  I found two images of Ray Walston (Mr. Hand to you 80’s loving movie go-ers) and glittered them up with jewels, stickles and metallic flecks.  The space ship on the left is metal duct tape.  it was just a bonus that there is a cute bird on the right!

Another new program launched in September 1963 was The Judy Garland Show.  In the early days of my altered book journey, it was hard to find images for a specific spread.  Nowadays you can find just about anything in Google images.  But interestingly, there were very few images from the show that were bigger than mere thumbnails.  You can specify “large” images in your search, so that they will print out crisp and clear and you can size them however you like to fit your collage.  Not to get into copyright laws or anything (a lengthy topic in the collage world) but in my opinion if I am using images for my own use, i.e. not to resell, there is nothing wrong with it.  I will never post images of another person’s artwork here without giving them credit.  Or better yet – add a link to their website.

Ok speech over!  So I found a telegram that Judy sent Sid Luft in 1963.  (it wasn’t in September – but I hid that on the page!)  Still relevant, don’t you think?  The image on the left was actually from the Andy William show, with Andy cut out!  The image on the right in the stunning sequin/zebra gown was the only one I could find of any quality.  I used a background of some black textured paper to echo the stripes and added some white and black glittery strips.  The green seaweed with “cool” on it was so perfect – it was just a  scrap on my work space left over from a prior book, “under the sea!”!