Collage Fragments Deconstructed

At first glance, this collage might seem like it's about as much fun to view as it is to trek a pilgrimage through desert sands. Barefoot. On one's knees.



"The Memory of Coffin Spelled Backward," paper collage
with décollage, Laura Tringali Holmes 2013

Yes, there is the anxious-looking child, supporting her chin with her hand, as swaths of thought patterns rendered in language symbols cut through her head. Not to mention the maps of places unvisited serving as background.

Like I said, burning desert sands.

Detail, "The Memory of Coffin Spelled Backward." The wafting misty mirror writing
 is achieved through gel transfer, in this case from paper taken from the Speedwriting
Shorthand Dictionary (1923). When you want a wafting look, there's nothing better,
in my humble opinion, than gel transfer combined with décollage. All the words
here begin with the letter C, and, yes, the word "coffin" is in there somewhere. 

And then there is that guy. Let's call him the father figure. What is he lifting? Could it be a child-sized coffin? Is the girl's integrity as a human being and her value inside? Is that why she looks so anxious? Is the guy about to come at her with a big fat belt?  Is that why all that language/thought stuff is afloat?

Like I said, barefoot and on your knees.

Detail, "The Memory of Coffin Spelled Backward." And, no,
it's not a coffin, just a tabletop being muscled onto its legs, from
a volume in the voluminous 1960s Practical Handyman encyclopedia.

But wait. There's more. C'mon down, Emily Dickinson, and bring your wonderfully poetic lines: "Hope is the thing with feathers...that perches in the soul." I invite you, dear readers, to note the direction of our girl's eyes.

Why...it would seem she's locked onto The Thing With Feathers! Not her father, or whatever it is he happens to be holding.

Detail, "The Memory of Coffin Spelled Backward." Okay, so the gaze isn't
perfectly aligned, but we collage artists do what we can with what we have.
And if you've been following this blog, you know that this girl has had her hopeful
work cut out for her, so we're going to give her a round of applause anyway.

And, for an even more potent portent, we have what I am, for the purposes of this blog entry, calling a "flourishing target." Do you know about my Target Practice Project? No? I won't trouble you with a nosebleed about the Project right now, but I do encourage you to learn about it and to enjoy the work of some 150 artists, who have generated over 300 images based on a single 1960s Sears Roebuck archery target, at these links:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/161991817319872/
http://thetargetpracticeproject.blogspot.com/

I have used a fragment of that same target here, but in this case, drilling down right here and right now, we can see that the plain paper target has taken on, through the magic of collage and the ink that lives on paper, evidence of fecundity. Wow. The plot gets thickerer and thickerer.

Detail, "The Memory of Coffin Spelled Backward." This shows the target, to which
I have added, through ink transfer from an old magazine page, tree trunks and
flourishing foliage. Hope is the thing with feathers, but hope is in nature, too.

So let's look at the collage again, shall we? And let's cast a weather eye toward the hope that is embedded, albeit subtly, because we survivors of narcissistic parents have certainly had plenty of opportunity to hone our survival chops (albeit subtly).

The point of all this being that once we can look at our memories, and realize that they ARE memories and not predictors of our futures...well...

...we are then on our way, aren't we?

Thank you, again, for listening. I am thankful, on this Thanksgiving weekend, that you are out there listening.



Don't Get Jittery On Me--Part 10, or "Natures Mortes"

And this is the end of my most recent altered book. Thank you for enduring the previous nine entries. Rest assured that after this post, I will no longer trouble you on this topic.

But there is something you need to know. Something that I know.

You might not see it at first, but if you look closely enough at anything living, even while it's in that blissful state of seeming perfection, there's usually evidence of something booking quick to that line between ripe and rotten--natures mortes.

This used to bother me. In fact, for the longest time, while otherwise enjoying the seminal Dutch still life paintings in particular, I'd avert my eyes at the blemish on the otherwise perfect pear skin, the wilting petal summarily dropped to the table from the otherwise fulsome peony.

But if you live long enough, your perspective has to change. Stasis is a joke. I turned 61 a few days ago. That's sixty-one. That casts a bit of a different shade on the fine line between ripe and rotten and the appreciation thereof. 

And so, while enjoying the last of Don't Get Jittery On Me, you might get the feeling that happy endings exist within a continuum larger than black and white. That's as it should be. Life is so much more complex, and so much more beautiful, than that, and we as a society really do need to talk about that.

But back to the book:

We left our heroine here at last reading, contemplating empty lawn chairs,
contemplating repose.



We turn the page...and encounter a concealed trifold. You'll see this open in the next photo.
If you've been following the evolution of this altered book, you might remember the image on the
right. Yup, she's now officially a motif. Here she dispenses advice in the same way she did in the
initial pages. "Stay a while. Complete the thought?" she asks the reader. The bookmark, an
altered playing card, presents an alternate view.

The trifold. Transparencies abound, but what is life but seeking transparency?
The text snips are really important here. I appreciate images. I appreciate words.
Most of all, I appreciate words riding shotgun with images.
 

A detail. There are symbolic references galore here to my life.
I won't bore you with that. But I will show you the lift-up flap...
 

After lifting, this is what you see. I love the exclamation point.
That snip comes from the liner notes of some pretty old vinyl.
 

"She kept herself company." Another detail of the trifold. A seemingly innocent statement,
note that there is an image, and then the same image, reversed, atop, which creates
a grouping of four from a photo of two. I'm not implying the need for multiple
personalities, simply that sometimes resiliency--and self-reliance--carry the day.
 

The next spread features birds (no surprise there) and, gasp, an Older Woman.
A viewfinder circle points out the bird brooch at the woman's throat. There's
a pink pig with wings. There's text. There are holes punched along a bifold
(on the right) Someday I'll thread them with ribbon or whatever. For now I'm
liking the negative space. (For the bird-impaired, at right you're looking at
a red-bellied woodpecker and a rufous hummingbird.)

A detail. I must say, I love that she's wearing a bird brooch. This page is composed of a photo,
collaged  papers, acetate transparencies, and a bit of metal to hold all the layers together.
I'm never complacent about the number of  repurposed things that can come together under
 my hands.

 

Geez, this is complicated. Apologies. The bifold on the right opens, and this
is what you see. Note the shadow bird on the left side of the bifold (a hawk), and
how it transforms into a dove on the right side of the bifold. There are lots
of men birds in the center, looking in all sorts of directions. Remember, this book
has as its theme recovery from being raised in a family with a narcissistic parent.
 

Turning the page, there's our heroine. And she's dancing! I devised a way to
get her to lift off the page at certain points to increase the feeling of motion.
On the right is a catchall pocket thing, with an altered playing card thanking...
people...with a vintage text strip. One of the things I like about recycling old
words is that...sometimes...it's easier than pulling them up from the heart.
 

Which brings us back to a snapshot of the opening spread. If there's one thing I have learned,
it's the beauty of circularity. This page shows the dedication. This book is for one of my three
children, Emma. Other projects have been and are dedicated to my other two children, Pete and Eva.
My children are individuals and I revel in their individuality.

Whew. And that is it for Don't Get Jittery On Me, an altered book, a labor of love created with painstaking detail and quite a few emotional twists and turns over more months than I can count. I leave you, dear reader, with some sadness, as is to be expected with any project that is finally finished. And for those of you who have ploughed through this with not much idea of what I'm talking about, I urge you to dig around in the blog archives for the earlier posts, which will reveal the themes and, if you are so inclined, the how-tos. 

Whatever will I write about now? Stay tuned.

And thanks, as always, for listening.

If you've enjoyed this series, you might want to have a peek at The Target Practice Project, an international collage collaboration that I began in order to use up the piles of 1960s Sears archery targets I discovered while cleaning up my father's garage after his death. I blog about it here http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2013_08_01_archive.html and here http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2014/09/one-year-later-empty-chair.html

You can get a much better sense of the scope of the Project--and marvel at the work contributed by a huge group of talented collage artists-- by popping over to the Tumbler, at http://thetargetpracticeproject.tumblr.com

Don't Get Jittery On Me--Part 9, or "This Deed Is Almost Done"

When last we left off in the construction of this altered book, we were inventing a future. Reinvention is such a hot topic these days. People molt identities like snakeskins and then write books and magazine articles about how you can and should do it, too. Oh, were it that easy!

But it is not. Our childhood patterns are insidious, the big green goo of them sliming into any unoccupied corner of our brains, not to mention our hearts. Think ectoplasm. Think Ghostbusters.

And then think challenges. And how our pasts do not have to be predictors of our futures...if we have the resolve and, more important, as a first step, if we are able to say to ourselves and anybody else who will listen " I don't want to be like that." In breaking the cycle, there can be the salvation. Take it from me or, better yet, find it out for yourself.

And here is the penultimate segment in how the long story of "Don't Get Jittery On Me," my altered book, my sort-of-autobiography, unfolds...as usual, presented in pictures. Augmented, as you have come to expect from me by now, with lengthy captions.

I hope to wrap this series up in 10 entries, this being the 9th. If, dear reader, you are completely lost, the previous blog entry is in the October archive list.

For a quick memory refreshment, we left off here:

Birdproofing mesh on the left reveals, when opened, a trio of raucous crows, a
talking stick, a leaping little girl, and some upstretched arms
indicating that all may (potentially) not be lost.

The next spread shows us people fleeing the abyss on the left under the
watchful eye of One Big Bird. Of course there is clarifying text. 
At right, under the purple netting, are additional plot details, including my favorite
line ever: "Had my hair not been so firmly painted on my head, it would
have stood on end." The girl in the porthole is from an old Look magazine.

PURPLE NETTING? May I interject my feelings about using "mixed media" with traditional collage here?  No? I can feel the purists' shudders.... Okay, a topic for another time....

When you flip the page you get more explanatory text and yet another porthole.
Now our girl's head is atop a bird. I suppose that's an editorial comment. At
left you see a card from a Boy Scout playing deck and a game spinner. The
broken key at the bottom of the bird at right is actually a handle.

When you lift it, you've got a score! The book from which this illustration
was taken couldn't be farther from the sporting world. But who could resist
the triumph in the posture? Things are starting to look up around here.

I think we may just have stumbled upon a turning point.

A long time ago, I wrote a blog about incorporating the garish foil
vintage greeting card, which appears on the right of this spread, in my
altered book. It turned out to be a pretty seamless entry, and provided a
springboard for editorial ruminations. Note the closed porthole
 with suggestions of "ok" and, "how."  I like
incorporating hints rather than clobbering people over their heads.

The thing to notice here is how, when you flip the page (and the garish greeting
card) onto the next spread, the stems of the glasses just appear. Collage is magic.
I can say no more. At right, I sistered in a page from the original book, which I had
removed initially as part of the book prep process, because it provides editorial
 continuity and because, although I don't really believe in such things,
I kind of like being a Scorpio.

And then, on the next spread, we have the lawn chairs. A foreshadowing of
repose? Our heroine is at least on the same page with those chairs. It's
been a long time coming, but she'll get to repose, I know.

 

 

Until next time. Thanks so much for listening.

The last in the series, Part 10, finally, whew, may be found here: http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2013/11/dont-get-jittery-on-me-part-10-or.html
 

 

 

Don't Get Jittery On Me--Part 8, or "Hello, It's Me"

My last post in June was just days before the unexpected death of my father, who plays quite the active character role in this altered book. If you are new to this series, welcome. Seek the archive bar at left for help in getting up to speed on the subject if you are lost or confused and wish to know more. I myself sought the archive bar for memory refreshment because I had put the book down for a good long time after my father's death. Death draws a line in the sand, does it not? But as much as death obfuscates, it can also help to clarify. And so, in recent weeks, I've continued work on my "Jittery" story.

Because it had been so long, I returned to square one, or, more accurately, page 1, of the book. It turned out that I had a lot to say, and so I found myself collaging additional levels of detail to just about every spread. The plot of the book also thickened. I found this surprising. And the ending became clear. Also surprising. I had entered the creation of this book as an open-ended exploration. Imagine my shock to discover that, like a more conventional treatise, it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. And that ending? Not to be a spoiler or anything, but it's looking like it just might turn out to be a happy one.

I'll let the pictures do the talking. You'll be looking at a little over a third of the final project here, with my usual copious editorial commentary.



Here's the book I altered. A humble planner from one of those old
 department stores that are long out of business. An interesting coincidence
is that a branch of this store existed not too far from where I spent
my teenage years. I'd always wanted to shop there, but my parents said it
was too expensive for me. I found this book at a library sale, screaming for
a new life. I heard the cry and plunked down my dollar.



This is the opener of the book, setting the stage for something that would
become vaguely (well, okay...highly) autobiographical. It wasn't until recently that
I addressed this page--I figured I would know more about the beginning as I
worked my way toward the ending. I chose images for this page with the care a scene-
setter demands. The "transparency" labels are puns on a family life that wasn't; the
red boxing glove, from a 1950s woman's magazine, foreshadows a rock 'em, sock 'em ride.

Here we have the first spread, and the catalyst for the book title. The
acetate transparency fastened over the photo at the corners allows the top layer
to wobble, giving the assembly a creepy, wavy look in person. The "don't get jittery on me"
text is embedded between the layers. Facing this role model of  calm and cool, on the left-hand
side is a large packing-tape transfer overlaid with a colorful hummingbird, which has a
bill as sharp as needle-nose pliers. A benign bird or not? All will be revealed, just not now.

A detail of the packing-tape transfer on the page, and the hummingbird
going straight for the vein. I love the look on the lady's face.

This is the second spread, an exercise in text and fragmentation. There are several
different ways in which the text blocks may sequence during reading, giving a variety
of interpretations. Two playing cards are tucked into slots. When they are removed,
more text is revealed. Additionally, when you pull out the card on the right and match
its measuring tape to the piece of measuring tape on the left, you get a surprise.

Among other things, the third spread features a bookmark made from an altered
playing card, an old image from Look magazine, a window cutout containing
 a transparent acetate image of a house, and a cunning paper curtain. The window
acts as a viewfinder both as is and when turned and also allows a glimpse of text that
suggests a sort of physical subconscious. Structures like this help reinforce continuity
over what is essentially a series of many inter-related canvases. Those interested in
structure should check out the first blogs in this series. You can locate them using the archive.

This is another view of the third spread, just showing the bookmark flipped to
reveal...surprise! Another altered playing card! I enjoyed the contrast between
the Alice image on one side and this lady, with the unfortunate string running
through her forehead, on the other. Note the little doll peeking in at the corner
of the window...she appeared on the second spread and you'll see her many
times more before this book is through. How she got into this book is detailed
in my earlier Don't Get Jittery On Me blogs.

The fourth spread. You can see how the window works when flipped, revealing
a bit of Alice, the clocks, and the word "mystery." The merry-go-round that
was hinted at on the previous spread is in full bloom here, and the text
reinforces what it was like to live that way. I added the lines through each of
the big dolls to repeat the theme of pole-through-carousel-horse, suggesting
that these dolls were part of the ride, not riders. Notice that the little girl is free of
a pole. I'd say she's a rider, not a ridee. You can do these sorts of things in an altered book.



This is a close-up of the image you see through the window on the
fourth spread.

In the fifth spread, we begin to approach the rising action of the story. The images
on the left convey blatant distress and contrast with the carefree dancing dolls from
the ad for the "It's A Small World" attraction at Disney theme parks--this particular
paper snip is from my treasured 1964 Official Guide to the New York World's Fair.
 Note the black netting at top right, which contains the crows. I talk about this at length
in a previous Jittery blog, so won't repeat why I felt it was necessary to add birdproofing.

A detail of the left page of the fifth spread. Those "tiles" are
made out of cardboard trimmed with metallic marker.

Turning the page to the sixth spread shifts the birdproofing to the previous image
and reveals the escape of our little doll. There are arms to catch her, at least
(according to the text snip) potentially. The wood stick functions as an internal
monologue bar, suggesting a thought wave that might run through one's head when
one is on the cusp of inventing a future, as pointed out on the left side of the page.

A detail of the sixth spread

And on that note, I will leave you for now. Just how does one invent a future, you might ask. An excellent question--stay tuned. And, as always, thanks for listening.

If you're following along, you may read Part 9 here: http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2013/11/dont-get-jittery-on-m-part-9-or-this.html

The Art of Target Practice

UPDATE: The Target Practice Project now has its very own blog, where the work of participating artists will be featured. You can follow along here: http://thetargetpracticeproject.blogspot.com.

 

 

While other kids were out doing social pre-teen things, I was being dragged around an archery trail or instructed how to man a fishing rod stuffed into a sand spike. Such is the life of a daughter of a sportsman. Of course there were other things I would much rather have been doing, but those things didn't matter and certainly nobody ever asked me about them. And I had learned at a much younger age not even to bring them up. This is because a parent afflicted with narcissism doesn't mirror back the child to the child as is desirable and normal, so what the child wants or needs simply doesn't matter. No, to a narcissistic parent, the child IS the mirror, reflecting back the parent's own issues and interests, in this case, bows and arrows, guns, fishing and camping gear, and boats.



Me in impossible shoes at the archery range at Ferry Point Park, Bronx, New York

My father left behind all this stuff when he passed away, at 90, in June of this year, but it was the tall stack of 1960s archery targets from Sears Roebuck, hidden behind some ancient fish coolers in the garage, that got my attention. As a collagist, I am always on the lookout for old paper with interesting patterns. Still, I didn't grab the targets right away. Instead, over the next several weeks I entered into a polite hands-off relationship with them, where I would nod in their direction as I entered and exited my father's house to perform my clean-out chores. Under self-scrutiny, I see that my relationship to the targets is not unlike the adult relationship I had with my father, especially in respect to my artwork, which he never once asked to see or even noticed on the walls of my home. Just as my pre-teen essence was irrelevant to my father, so was my adult essence. My father died without ever acknowledging even a single product of my heart, spirit, or hand.

 

Archery targets, vintage 1960s, from Sears, Roebuck & Co.

 

But now I had these targets, and something grand in me wanted to make the two divergent threads—one of my artwork, one of my father—intertwine. You could say that I saw redemption in the crosshairs. Time was offering me an opportunity to create a congruence that had not existed in my life, and so I pulled back the metaphorical bow string and shot the arrow. I snapped some photos of the pile of targets, posted them on Facebook, and put out a call to my artist friends both here in the States and internationally. Who wanted to collage some targets? I started a group on Facebook, called “Target Practice,” where people could post their work. Within a few days I had mailed out almost 150 targets. Finished target collages have already started to roll back in. It is amazing what artists are doing with them.

 

Targets on their way out the door

 

These aren't memorials to the past, just enchantment in the present. This gives me comfort and great hope.

You can link to the Facebook group here, https://www.facebook.com/groups/161991817319872/ but for now here's a look at some of the great work that's already been posted. Stay tuned for an update as more work arrives.

Up Urz - "Culture Kill - Season 13 :: Attack of the 50 Foot Target"

Michael Harford

Isabel Reitemeyer

Carolina Chocron - "Woody...rescue
me,  sweetheart!"

Terry R. Flowers - "No. 2"

Kacper h. Kiec  - "Bullet Man"

Isabelle Thibault Jolin - Wheel of Fortune

Peggy Despres

Denise Giardullo - "Beauty is in the Eye of
the Beholder"

Richard Leach - "may vary"



Walter Brandtner

Magda Dudziak

Musta Fior - "Double Brain Girls"



Mara Thompson

 

 

 

Fred Free - "Good-By"

 

 

Audrey Smith - "Bloom"

 

David Huff - "The Medium is the Message"

 

Marcela Perez Joyas Textiles -"Let's
Go Girls!"

 

Cory Peeke - "On the Hunt...Brought
To You By Sears"

 

 

 



 

 

 

 



Laura Tringali Holmes - "Wheel of Fortune"

 

 

 

 





 



Nestow Sakaczbia - "To Be Or Not To Be"



 

 

 

 

 

 

Denise Aumick

 

Michael Church - "Cut"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Andrew Lundwall





John Andrew Dixon - "Friday, 1963"



Stephen Boyling - "Target America"



Amy Duncan - assemblage




Robert Tucker - "Blare"



Artificial-K-Bittle
 



Jan Willem Kouwen
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zach Collins

Nikki Soppelsa

Nadja Voss - "Destiny"

Ana Gabino Gabino - "Sin Corazon"

Kathrin Diestel - "A Statement"

Matt Taggart

Laura Tringali Holmes - "Wing Nut"

Carl Heyward

Andrew Lundwall

Charlotte Dora

Dianne Hoffman - Spellbound

Ted Tollefson