Laura Tringali Holmes: June 2013

Water is healing. I have usually managed to live on its fringes, even if the water is a wetland, more solid than liquid, more bird or bog turtle than fish. No surprise then that my hand found, on one fine morning, a piece of paper that spoke to me of water and I glued it in place opposite the floating Ophelia doll in my altered book. To those who have been following this series, welcome back. To those who are new, hello.

As you can see, the paper comes from an Old Navy shipping bag. Not much goes to waste around here.

When I glued down the paper, I left space at the top, so I could insert something…like this altered playing card. Nothing special, this playing card, just some verbal diarrhea as would come from a parent who wouldn't let his kids ever finish a sentence. Verbal diarrhea is common in narcissistic parents. The barrage of words on this card is more about emotion than art--a little overwhelming to look at, which was my intent. I sometimes use devices like this to spark feelings in viewers rather than as visuals in and of themselves. I added some texture to the page with pure white mesh, courtesy of the fabulous collage artist Zach Collins, whose work you can enjoy here: http://zachcollinsart.tumblr.com/. Then, while cogitating, I penciled around the text on the facing page, simply to draw attention to the words and to give myself some time to ease into my next steps.

The texture of the mesh echoed the shapes of the water droplets. I couldn't resist.

When I alter books, I flip around a lot, going from front to back rather than working through in logical order. Today I was drawn to the opening spread, an important place in any book. You never know when you're going to get brave. Today was, apparently, my day. I was up for foretelling, for scene-setting, for making a statement that would be clear to all those who view this project. Bam. Pow.

For the page facing the jittery girl, I went with a packing-tape transfer depicting a bunch of ghostly parts. That would make anyone jittery, right? The logic appealed to me because I spend a lot of time these days addressing my ghostly parts. I like how the images on the packing-tape transfer highlight the word "repair" on the old paper underneath. This book is definitely about repairing. Families led by a narcissistic parent usually have golden children and scapegoat children. The scapegoat child tends to become the repository for the family's ills and, in a particularly surreal-seeming twist of fate, the scapegoat child usually has a penchant for truth-telling. Like that's welcome! This adds a few more tablespoons of angst to the child's recipe, because who wants the truth?

Guess which child I was. Golden or scapegoat? Yup, there's quite a bit to repair here.

Here's an overview of the spread. Packing-tape transfer on the left. Acetate overlay onto photo, which renders the image "jittery" with weird interplays of light and movement, at right.

A detail of the packing-tape transfer. This is a honking big transfer--about 5x7. If you're just starting out with this sort of transfer, probably better to build your chops working smaller at first.

I liked what I did with the opening spread, and, so buoyed, flipped to the birdproofing spread that I had constructed last time. If you are so inclined, you can refresh your memory of that work here: http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2013/05/dont-get-jittery-on-mepart-6-or.html. Resolving childhood issues gets dicey because there's a tendency to keep wanting to solve the old problems in real time. This can be very hard on current relationships as well as on one's relationship with oneself. I wanted to express that feeling of sorrow, which sometimes verges on hopelessness. When all was said and glued, I was quite pleased with the contrast between the faces of the women and the happy 1964 New York World's Fair Guidebook Disneyland advertisement (altered, of course), on the facing page.

So many images, it was hard to choose.

This is where I wound up, showing everything glued down, reality vs. fantasy.

Flipping the page, you get this. Note how the birdproofing mesh interacts with the image of the woman underneath. In an altered book, images often have to work in a number of ways, a challenge that I love to try to meet in unexpected ways. It's very different from flatwork, where a clever juxtaposition can exist in its own dimension, in its own right.

On the right-hand page, I collaged some arms to catch that falling doll and text that hints at the word "potentially." Blessed is the potential in children, all children.

Catch me, please! The arms--and the text snip--come from a 1937 copy of Look magazine.

And then it was back to the water spread, the one with the Old Navy shipping bag, for one last look of the day. Critical mass plays a huge part in my work. The story builds and builds....I flip to and fro...and you layer my honesty imperative on top of the story...and all of a sudden there's a measurable thicknesses of paper.

Here, as you can see, I chose to add a male image to the spread. I thought it made sense with the verbal diarrhea altered playing card in the pocket.