some dog's barking lips to use as credit for my videos.

I've had two names for years that I use for art: barktok and barkinglips. I finally made a little animation of talking (barking) lips to insert into videos near the end.

This video from 2010 is based on an poem I wrote about 30 years ago about the "Thunderer" as in Sousa's march of the same name. I used an altered action figure with a costume made from a leather purse, backdrop large photos of buildings around Baltimore, and hinged cardboard cutouts of a band on sliders which I could move across the set.

Her is a crocheted life-size figure that I made about 10 years ago, and have used in installations and videos. In STUFF she is a homeless artist, who makes crocheted art, including a memory vest from found string, yarn, shoelaces, etc., to commemorate events and friends. She observes that she makes art because she wants people to see that she isn't just a homeless person. This was installed at AACC, and at Metro Gallery in 2011, where Her sat in her cart and watched her video on an old TV in front of her. http://vimeo.com/18328748

Got dog hair? Try this new device which incorporates features from NASA clean rooms, HEPA filters, HOOVER vacuums, spaceship airlocks, and all you need is a handyman! Will suck excess hair, dust, scabs, burrs, fleas, etc., off your dogs so that your surroundings will remain (?) serene!

Got dog hairs? Here's an invention that attaches to the back door, and -- using technology copied from NASA, HOOVER, FULLER Brushes, spaceship airlocks, dog groomers, and the ever-expanding Ether -- sucks off excess hair, burrs, dust, seedpods, scabs, fleas, and more from all dogs who enter the house through it! Done originally for a PBS series about inventions, but mine was too long to enter the contest!

Two plastic dolls hear about a video contest and decide to make two videos. With several friends, the husband doesn't get much past a flow chart and a lotta beer (see little beer cans!), but the wife makes a short animated video using cutouts of a pink dress and a tuxedo to celebrate everyone's high school prom!

Shadowbox (frame not shown) with a sculpture made from found twigs, roots, wood, that represents the many tangles of trees that had drifted ashore on Ossabaw Island, off Savannah. I was a writer at the artist/writer colony in 1981, and invited to participate in a show in fall 2011 in Savannah, I wrote a poem and made this piece, which includes a painting that illustrates the poem.

I didn't keep my mother's mother's Victorian chair, alas, so I painted a version of it on a found wing chair (Behr stain-hiding paint) and then a portrait of my cat Emitte sleeping on the seat, as he did for 12 years on the fancy chair itself.

Oil painting on canvas, my cat Annie Fannie, asleep on (above) my bed. I painted this in 1975, but use the images in videos now.

This dog was painted from a dog I crocheted, the only "new" stuffed dog in the bunch.

This is my wonderful 15 year old Emitte at the vet's. I was able to hold the camera out away from us and take the photograph, which by luck includes a photograph on the wall way behind us of a similar cat. All I did with this picture was increase the contrast slightly with Photoshop.

For a while in 2011 I would bring home the haul from that day's gleaning of found objects, and dump it all on a table outside and photograph it. I loved having a hairpin and an action figure arm, a safety pin and a broken doll arm with three big holes, plus the iron, oyster shell and glass. The arm was a real bonus for that day's finds.

I collect a large amount of runover metal and other found objects. The various pieces that were laid on the slate table outside my back door were rained on and rusted, leaving these stains. The composition of the rust stains was even better than when the objects were on the table.

This dog bed was lying on the kitchen floor and the sun was stream in. I was struck by the strong angular straight-edged shadows and the soft curves of the bed itself. This picture is on my JPG site.

Same old Toyota truck, this shows the extra cab's back seat where the dogs spent many thousands of miles of travel. That is their blanket crumpled on the seat, and a RESIST bumper sticker which occasioned many comments over the years.

I actually cried for several days when my 19-year old truck died in April 2011. At the junkyard I took many pictures inside and out, of all the details I had become so accustomed to and fond of. This door shows what my puppies, now grown, did to the interior of the truck.

The colors of the bowls and the mat under the water bowl, and the angles of the stove and the wall, struck me one night. Because of my near sightedness, I often see faces or biomorphic forms (here, eyes or nostrils?) in rather abstract scenes. I try to crop in camera, but don't hesitate to fuss with the texture or color with Photoshop.

I have a green-glass shaded lamp just to the left of these breadboxes, and the night of January 1, 2012, sitting with friends in my kitchen, I caught a glimpse of the boxes and their wonderful colors, and photographed them. I really like the angles in this, and the two punctum -- the knobs on the doors. Punctum, a term used by Roland Barthes, meant to him the often tiny, even accidental detail that "pierces the viewer."

I have a back wall, under the porch, with pegs holding a variety of blue bottles. I did it because I love Southern bottle trees, and because so many old bottles from Baltimore are cobalt blue. This picture, one of 100 or so, also has the blue shadow and the compositional elements I like.

Photo montage using a newspaper photo, various photos of my own, and elements from Studio 360 "Photo Remix" challenge

This 14" high crocheted dog figure sits high up in my living room, at eye level with another brown dog depicted in a hooked rug my mother made. So Nicky (this one) and Chloe (my other little brown dog from long ago) are together, and above the fray.

Here is Brown Dog, wearing a real harness, and guarding a rubber ball and other found objects.

Here is Brown Dog sitting high on his pedestal with (lower part of) a wood sculpture by Doug Hoagg (former Baltimore artist/teacher) on wall, along with some bones.

Close up of head, showing some of the brushed-wool crochet stitches.

Brown Dog, based on my late great Nicky Copernicus, actually appears to be staring at a hooked rug dog my mother made a few feet away, but by the trick of light, he appears to be looking at us. An angular wooden wall sculpture by Doug Hoagg is on the wall behind him.

I took a series of photographs of myself, using the built in camera in my Mac, and some of the best were a series with my turtleneck pulled up over my lower face.

The operculum is a sort of fragile door to the inside of the shell of land and sea creatures. I found this one years ago on a beach, and placed it in an Art Deco Matt to photograph for my writing blog.

I have been working on a series called "Words from the Box" to combine visual 3-D art with writing. I find a container (box, gourd, tin), think of a theme or subject, make and adapt small sculpted or painted objects to go inside the container. Then I cut out sections from a Thesaurus that relate to the theme or the emotion, and glue them all over the outside or inside (or both) of the box. Finally, I write a poem using only the words found in the cutout pieces. Here is the poem for this one: An Old Man with a Bone and a Spade He is on one side of his fence, then the other. Over and over. He swears he is holding back every crossways threat, Each thunderhead, With nothing but spade and bone, tongue and dance. Or . . . He is trying to decide between Spade-bone, Dance-tongue, Kick-cry, Drum-flummery, Feather-tickle. But what is the threat? What’s the calamity? Remembering . . . or not remembering. Until whatever happens happens. Give advice to him. Say: “Stick it out, hold your ground.” Tell him about Petrarch’s “Time’s revolving wheels.” He knew that you can try to stop it, but it will be back like the tide. “It” – Time or Memory? Must Time have its way? Is Memory a surprise party from the past? That old man thinks he can advance upon the past until he Catches it off-guard. What’s the sense of guarding the present When the passage of time will replace imminent danger With a new instant? Time, by itself, will turn itself into Past. The old man’s braincave is a grave Where warnings ricochet; His memory storm-cellar is a trash-filled truck That barges in and out. Greener grass will be on one side or the other, no matter where He draws the line or stakes his fence. What he wants to call attention to, and what he hopes stays hidden, Lie together; they are Cronies waiting for him ??? to forget. Is it just the memory of memory that comes down With the green clouds before a storm? Or do those revolving wheels break memory on the rack, Smash it, hurtle through and leave half behind – That other half to bounce separate, bashed, for the rest of Time. The old man, devil-and-all himself, will be disturbed No matter what. He stands over the fence with his weapons – Bone for time, spade for remembering. But he has no memory of what he did the last time. Without a book of rules, he doesn’t know what to do. Maybe he will fill the waiting time by writing words On the outside. On the inside he will mix himself up trying To recall the word he started with. Until whatever happens happens.

Everything is made from the paper cut out of this discarded book. This side is the Third Dog, peering through the fence at the other two dos.

This dog is surprised to be coming up from the depths of a book! When he started digging, who knew where he'd end up! This book, "The Hidden Life of Dogs" by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, was altered by cutting out pages and making a papier mache dog to rise up out of the center. The red ball was made from the cover. My dog Jack Kerouac helped by chewing one page under the table, and I used his "mash". This book is part of a series of altered books, all on dogs. The latest one won Honorable Mention at the Pratt Library Exhibit of altered books, December 2010.