Elena Mary Siff ~ California

The Book of Cards
By Elena Mary Siff
Santa Monica, California: Elena Mary Siff, 2009. One-of-a-Kind.

2.5 x 8.25 x 1.5"; 30 pages. Piano hinge binding with pointed dowels topped by beads. Collage with found objects.

Pages of collaged playing cards and found objects with appropriate sayings from Emerson, Galileo, Pancho Villa, Eleanor Roosevelt, and others.

"Don't let it end this way. Tell them I said something." – Pancho Villa
$250

Diva Divine
By Elena Mary Siff
Santa Monica, California: Elena Mary Siff, 2009. One-of-a-Kind.

6 x 8.5"; 18 pages. Found objects. Collage. Popsicle sticks and beads.

In this homage to Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954), Siff combines collage and other found objects. The result is a "stick'' figure with the face of Kahlo tipped on. The skirt is a book of collaged images.

Elena Mary Siff: "My love of assemblage art and my love of book art caused me to combine these techniques to create book objects. Diva Divine is a good example of these blended art forms. I enjoy expanding the notion of what a book can be; in this case an art doll, a book and a piece of assemblage art which can be hung on the wall. Frida Kahlo's art and the Mexican fortunetelling loteria cards are inspirations to me, and I have combined my interests in both to create this book object."
$295

Blood
By Elena Mary Siff
Santa Monica, California: Elena Mary Siff, 2008. One-of-a-Kind.

4 x 4.75 x 1"; 14 pages. Jacob's ladder binding. Collage and found objects.

After seeing Daniel Day-Lewis in There was Blood, Siff was inspired to create this red book. Quotations from the past — Booker T. Washington, Virgil, Gandhi, Schweitzer, and others — about politics, death, and war.
$220

Road Maps
By Elena Mary Siff
Santa Monica, California: Elena Mary Siff, 2008. One-of-a-Kind.

Structure: 5.1 x 1.25 1.75". Accordion book: .6 x 1.2" closed; .6 x 9" extended; 18 pages. Accordion folds out from the flat bed of a toy truck, which has been mounted on a thin wood base. The pages are collage using stamps and cut-out text.

A spinoff of Siff's "Art in Transit" project (2004) in which she created a series of ten trucks on which she collaged works of well known artists. In this version, she has used a miniature truck as the base to haul wise words (by Plato, Vergil, da Vinci, Norman Cousins, and others) for life.

"The first step to wisdom is silence. The second is listening."

$175

Confucius and others
By Elena Mary Siff
Santa Monica, California: Elena Mary Siff, 2007. One-of-a-Kind.

6 x 9"; 5 leaves. Handmade paper. Handsewn stab binding with accent of shells and beads. Collage and found objects.

Quotations from Confucius, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Aristotle, Virgil, Albert Schweitzer, Henry David Thoreau, Francis Darwin, and Hugo De Groot adorned by collage work.

Confucius: "The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort."
$275

No Act of Kindness...
Wise Sayings from the Orient
By Elena Mary Siff
Santa Monica, California: Elena Mary Siff, 2007. One-of-a-Kind.

4.8 x 7.1"; 4 leaves. Collage with text and found objects: metal bits, faux jewelry, thread, and cloth. Paper handmade by artist.

Interspersed with Siff's collage are snippets of sayings from the Orient.

"By much falling the child learns to walk."
$300

Wise Words
By Elena Mary Siff
Santa Monica, California: Elena Mary Siff, 2007. One-of-a-Kind.

3 x 3.8"; 16 pages. Cloth bound. Thread and button closure. Collage and found objects.

Quotes from Delacroix, Herbert Henry Asquith, Shakespeare, Lincoln, George Herbert, Horace Walpole, Goethe, Thoreau, Schweitzer, Elmer Davis, Saadi, Galileo, Einstein.

Anonymous: "Children may close their ears to advice, but open their eyes to example."
$215

The Best Mirror is an Old Friend
By Elena Mary Siff
Santa Monica, California: Elena Mary Siff, 2006. One-of-a-Kind.

4.9 x 9" oval book. Stab binding with bead-and-shell tassel accents. Mixed media and collage.

Quotations from the past (George Herbert, Gandhi, Schweitzer, etc.) speak to the present.

"Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them." —Paul Valery (1871 - 1945)

"If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends, you talk to your enemies." — Moshe Dayan (1918 - 1981)
$300

Evolved Individuals
By Elena Mary Siff
Santa Monica, California: Elena Mary Siff, 2008. One-of-a-Kind.

5 x 6.75 x 1.25"; 4 pages. Handmade paper by Siff with found objects (beads and strings). Piano hinge binding with pointed dowels topped by beads.

Siff fondly calls this "the bark book" as there are strips of bark incorporated in the collages. Quotations from Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching.

"They do not display themselves; therefore, they are illuminated"
$250

Establishing a Universal View
Quote by Lao Tzu
Santa Monica, California: Elena Mary Siff, 2007. One-of-a-Kind.

6.5 x 10"; 10 leaves. Pages re-cycled from a watercolor (on handmade paper) by artist Sam Erenberg (Siff's husband). Piano hinge binding with chopsticks adorned with beads at points.

Quotations from Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching:

"What is skillfully established will not be uprooted."
$325

The Skillful Exchange of Information
[Quotations] by Lao Tzu
Santa Monica, California: Elena Mary Siff, 2007. One-of-a-Kind.

3.25 x 8"; 8 leaves. Piano hinge binding with pointed dowels topped by beads. Collage with found objects. Pages of handmade paper.

Elena Siff: "The text is from the Tao of Power (Tao Te Ching) by Lao Tzu, a Chinese philosopher of the 6th BC. His words are as powerful today as the day they were written. The more things change the more they stay the same in this world obsessed with power and control. "

"A good path has no ruts."
$250.

At Home
By Elena Mary Siff
Santa Monica, California: 2000. One-of-a-Kind.

6.2 x 5.5", 10 pages. Collage accented with found objects. Ten heavily collaged pages present home-styles from around the world.

Elena Siff: "To remind people that they are basically the same no matter where or when they lived."
$375

City
By Arthur Rimbaud
Santa Monica, California: Elena Mary Siff, 1991. Edition of 5.

10 x 7.4"; 12 pages. Stab binding. Three etchings. Stiff hand-painted covers.

Siff uses a quotation from Rimbaud's "Illuminations" (1875) with her etchings and collages of city buildings. Interesting that what was true in the 19th century is still true in the 21st century.

"I am an ephemeral and no too discontented citizen of a metropolis considered modern because all known taste has been evaded in the furnishings and the exterior of the houses as well as in the layout of the city. Here you would fail to detect the least trace of any monument of superstition. Morals and language are reduced to their simplest expression, at last!..."
$450

Book of Fabulous Feminine Fancies
By Elena Mary Siff
Santa Monica, California: Elena Mary Siff, 2009. One-of-a-Kind.

6.5 x 5.25"; 10 cloth pages. 8 ACEOs (Artist Card Exchange Originals). Collage and found objects. Each recto page with sewn fabric pocket. Hand-sewn stitched binding accented with handmade beads and found objects.

Fabric book with Artist Card Exchange Originals, cards designed by collage artists for exchanging with other artists.
$325

Sha-weetie (Babe in a Bag)
By Elena Mary Siff
Santa Monica, California: Elena Mary Siff, 2008. One-of-a-Kind.

11 x 9.5"; doll, bag, miniature book. Book: 1.7 x 3"; 8 pages; accordion; collage. Doll: found objects (buttons; textiles; bits and pieces of jewelry). Processes: sewing; collage.

An assemblage using bits and pieces to re-dress a discarded doll. A sort of pocket in the doll's dress holds an accordion fold book of collages with images of women and Day of the Dead characters. Word phrases are collaged across the pages — from "no thanks" to "how much sin can I get away with." Virtue? Vice? Reality? Fun? Yes.
$350