In Progress (detail)
collage with encaustic and oil pastel on wood panel
I’ve been trying to get this piece sorted out for ages, and it just keeps fighting me tooth and nail. I think the background is finally in a fit enough state to move forward, though.
The Remembrancer: The Third Eye
collage (anatomical illustrations, slide mount mask, child’s dress pattern, diary key, altered Polariod, and yearbook photos) with Neocolors II water-soluble crayons, coffee, pencil, and gesso
The Remembrancer: To Begin, Take the Measure
collage (anatomical illustration, altered photo, child’s dress pattern, architectural blueprint, and book fragments) with Neocolors II water-soluble crayons and gesso
The Remembrancer: Circles and Circles
collage (magazine illustration and yearbook photos)
The Remembrancer: The Bee Chorus
collage (slide mount mask, soap wrapper, child’s dress pattern, and poem fragment) with Neocolors II water-soluble crayons and gesso
And we would have trouble
in picking them out
The Remembrancer: The Best Laid Plans
collage (magazine clippings and architectural plans)
4 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches
The Remembrancer: Sangre
collage (ink jet print, book fragments, yearbook photos, magazine clippings, and altered Polaroid)
4 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches
The Remembrancer: New Constellations
collage (anatomical illustration, magazine clipping, map, button, and yearbook photos)
4 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches
And with that, there is one two-page spread and two single pages to go, and the book will be done.
The Remembrancer: Odalisque
collage (anatomical illustration, magazine clipping, raffle tickets, glass, label, and token)
4 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches
The Remembrancer: Button Up
collage (leaf, buttons, and child’s dress pattern) with Neocolors II water-soluble crayons and gesso
4 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches
Which makes me think of this:
Show me the ways to button up buttons
That have forgotten they’re buttons
Well we can’t have that
Forgetting that
Girls
The Remembrancer: Charities
collage (altered photo, anatomical illustration, leaf, fragment of mirror, and magazine clipping)
4 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches
The Remembrancer: The Cloister Shell
collage (anatomical illustration, altered Polaroid, yearbook photos, brass brads, child’s dress pattern, and magazine clipping) with Neocolors II water-soluble crayons and gesso
4 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches
The Remembrancer: Had He Ploughed This Pathless Sea
collage (anatomical illustrations, map, ticket, and altered poem) with Neocolors II water-soluble crayons and gesso
4 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches
But had he ploughed this pathless sea
He might have sailed eternally.
The Remembrancer: Default
collage (altered Polaroid, anatomical illustrations, and brass brad) with Neocolors II water-soluble crayons and gesso
4 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches
I really like the way the altered Polaroid turned out. The original photo was of a stack of prints (lithographs, I think) lying on the mat room work bench at the art museum. We were discussing museum self-censorship (the director had decided not to exhibit the print of the nude, because we’d recently had complaints from a community member about nude artwork), so the preparator stuck a piece of black paper over the crotch of the woman and took a Polaroid of it. At the bottom of the photo, he wrote: Museum Censorship.
I kept the picture, intending to deconstruct it and use it in my own work. I separated the emulsion from the backing and washed out the right hand side of the image with a baby wipe, leaving just a bit of red and yellow. I then pasted an image of a woman from an anatomy text behind the photo.
The Terrible Hours: What Each Girl Should Bring
A comment left at Flickr for the above image:
Very creative and well done, but for me a little too morbid making it uncomfortable to look at..
It seems like a pretty innocuous statement, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder, what’s the point? If taken at face value, it seems odd to me that someone would go out of their way to leave a comment that simply states that they prefer less “morbid” work. My response is, “That’s nice, dear, but what does it have to do with me?” In other words, I don’t really care what sort of art an anonymous passer-by prefers. M’kaythen!
Or is it meant to be constructive criticism? If so, good luck with that! I mean, really, telling someone that their work is too “morbid” is not exactly constructive, in that there is precious little chance that they will find it helpful, or that they will change their subject matter or style of work to accommodate your wishes.
And, I’m sorry, but “morbid”? I think that might be true of some of my pieces, but that particular collage is not one of them.
Ironically, the commenter in question has no photos in their Flickr photostream and no profile.
red paper boat 