With A Simple Change of Hats

There's nothing as potent as an act of creation to shift one's tectonic plates, to shake out a new perception or two from the old truth. I suspect that when people get into “a zone,” their brains forge brave new neurological pathways. And surely the personal defense network loses some of its force when one is on fire with focus. Not that I have been on fire with focus. On the contrary. I've been coping (or not) with that most difficult of adult transitions, the loss of a parent. Still, or maybe because of, there is capacity for movement forward.

As illustration, below you will find two pieces of work. One is a "before" and one is an "after." I collaged the "before" in June of this year (about two months after my mom was killed). I loved the old photo, and especially the lady on the left. I loved, and still love, how the lady looks into the camera, how she wears those long black gloves in a rowboat. When I first saw her, I wanted to sail her off into the sunset in fine style, as a sort of tribute to my mom. My goal was to conjure a flying-off-the-edge-of-the-earth feeling, and, in fact, as a design reference I used the Peter Pan attraction in Fantasyland at Disney World, a ride where one goes careening over London in a flying pirate ship.

I made an acetate transparency of the photo, back-papered the rowboat with assorted paper scraps, and developed light and color. At the end of the process, on a whim, I opened a brand new jar of tar gel (never used the stuff before, had scooped it off a clearance rack), and soon found that by whipping the gel really hard I could get ocean-spray-like bubbles, which I liked. (I also made plastic-looking swaths, which I didn't like, but that's a subject for another time.) At the last minute I gave the lady with the long gloves a whimsical yellow hat using paper cut from an old notebook. While I felt that the work had areas of disjointed composition, I didn't know what to do about it, so I called this piece done.

The BEFORE collage
 8x10 hand collage on canvas board
Photo courtesy of the collection of Mrs. Inman

Fast forward to just a few days ago—mid-August, two months after the original composition. I find myself in my workshop trying to scratch off that damn yellow hat. What the heck? It seems that I was having an allergic reaction. There was something about the whimsy of that hat that was really bothering me. And those gloves? I was having a problem with them, too. My mom, the copilot of my dad's sushi fishing enterprise, would never have seen the humor—or the statement—in wearing them, although in her youth, before children, I understand she was quite the fashion plate. And then there was this. The woman's direct gaze.

I can't remember the last time my mom looked at me like that. 

Clearly, some truth was trying really hard to get out.

And, as most truths will do, if we listen, this one eventually rose to the surface. 

And this is what I heard. The "before" collage is more about the mother who I wished I had than it is about the mother who I actually did have. This piece is not about my mom at all. It is about me. When I took breaks from digging at the the surface of the work with my fingernails, there emerged tantalizing bits and pieces of the truth, and I eventually realized that the disjointed elements I had come to criticize in the piece were a reflection of my own disjointed emotions, nothing more and nothing less.

But although I'm talking pain here--sadness and regret--I'm also talking epiphany, and that is where the "after" version of the collage comes in. If you hang around in your head long enough, I find, connections emerge, and in this case I realized that while the lady in the long gloves had nothing to do with my mother, she had everything to do with one of my daughters (who, coincidentally, is celebrating a birthday later this month). This daughter wears the photo lady's confident and determined gaze. This daughter values precision but delights in play and whimsy. This daughter is as comfortable on the ocean as she is on shore. This daughter, a born traveler, would as easily wear long black gloves as Thai fisherman's pants. Most important, this daughter, the girl born with maps in her bloodstream, wouldn't hesitate to board one of  Peter Pan's pirate ships for a careening voyage anywhere.

And so an imperative was born, and I challenged myself to redo the collage for my daughter's birthday. Which I did, reflecting not only my love for my daughter but the connection she shares with her grandmother, my mom. The hats were key here. I made them out of postage stamps, and the postage stamps at the bottom of the piece reflect not only the places to which my daughter has already travelled, but many of the places yet to be seen.

Past. Present. Future.

Here is the result. Thanks as always for listening.

The AFTER collage
"The Travelers"
 8 x 10 hand collage on canvas board
Featuring  many postage stamps