Not Payin' for Playin'

A few years ago I mostly stopped doing "pay for play," meaning that I don't cough up jury fees anymore. Of course there are exceptions--sometimes I'll empathize with a start-up gallery's need for cash flow (hey, support the arts!), or I'll want to support a gallery's first venture into showing collage (great that you're taking a risk on this exciting medium! here's my money!). Then I'll write the check. I see these more as charitable contributions than as competitions for wall space and if my work winds up fitting into the mix of the curation, that's great. If not, that's fine, too. 

If I can't view the jurying fee as a charitable contribution for whatever reason, I no longer support the act of paying somebody to judge my work. I find that I react particularly badly to the personalized invitations from gallery owners or curators that lavishly compliment my work and then invite me to submit my work for consideration, accompanied, of course, by jurying fees. I suppose the currency that's being traded here is flattery (and, of course, "exposure," if the work is accepted), but when I get these sorts of communications, I can't help but feel like a cash cow. Moo.

By contrast, I really don't object to reasonable hanging fees. We all run on short margins, and I really do like to support the arts. But when you pay a hanging fee, you are getting value in return for your expenditure--your work is being displayed. It seems win-win all around.

Recently I received an invitation to submit these three pieces for consideration to an exhibition:

"one blue eye" 2014
8x10 on recycled canvas board
Paper collage with mixed media (direct-paper-to-paper gel ink transfers, pencil, pen, acrylics, Lucite viewfinder)

"World Without End" 2014
8x10 on canvas boardPaper collage with mixed media (direct-paper-to-paper gel ink transfers, dye ink, rub-on letters, pencil, glaze, gold paint)

"DUCK" 2014
5 x 7 on canvas board
Paper collage with mixed media (direct-paper-to-paper gel ink transfers, dye ink), beeswax finish

While my typical routine in this situation has been to send back a polite little note expressing my deepest appreciation and promising to consider the kind invitation to write a check (and then promptly sending the "opportunity" into the junk file), this time I decided to respond more frankly.

Here, instead, is what I wrote:

Thanks so much for your enthusiastic support of my work in mixed-media collage. I'm flattered that you'd consider displaying my work in your upcoming show. Feel free to view my work on my website and let me know which pieces would best fit within your curatorial vision. I'm assuming that since you approached me, and obviously know my work, that you'll be waiving your jury fee. If we wind up working together, I'd be happy to discuss an appropriate hanging fee, to support your and the gallery's endeavors, added to the gallery's usual sales commission.

We'll see how this works out.

Just sayin' no to "moo."

One Year Later, An Empty Chair

It's been over a year since I started The Target Practice Project, and what a difference a year makes. New to me? To this? The Project is a global collage collaboration based on the use of a single core image--a 1960s Sears archery target, piles of which I discovered in my father's garage when cleaning out his house after he died in June of 2013. The Project didn't come about as a sweet memorial to a loved one but rather as a means of seeking truth about a life gone awry. My life. If you don't dig around for the truth, all the worst stuff stays in your mind. Worse yet, it stays in your imagination, eventually cratering into a deep pit of murky influence that threatens to drown all the good things that come your way. Being raised by a narcissist will do that to you, and even after your particular narcissist is gone, his or her impact lives on.

One of the first pieces to come into the Project was this one by Michael Tunk, a prolific collage artist out of Alameda, California. Entitled "The Narcissist," this is one big piece both in physical size and in impact. It's also a literal piece, a work of solidarity reflecting what I had written about the Project at its inception. (If you're playing catch-up, have no fear: Links to everything appear at the bottom.) I had seen "The Narcissist" online in the various Project collage groups, of course, but it wasn't until a few weeks ago that it made its way home to me here in New York, with a casual suggestion from Michael that I might want to put on my collaborator's hat and add some of the original 1960s target fragments to the image. "Of course," I said.

"The Narcissist," by Michael Tunk, one of the first collages to come into The Target Practice Project in 2013

Like I said, a lot can change in a year. One year and a few months after the death of my father, after bailing out a lot of my personal crater's dark muck one wee coffee can at a time, I realized that, miraculously, I had found a little more than a modicum of peace. I had, again miraculously, recaptured my humor. Since Michael had included guns, I made a pun on the word "range" by including an appliance ad from an old edition of House Beautiful. Narcissists do so love gain without pain, so what better tribute than to give my own narcissist a shot of "glamour" but "without the expense"? I added the original 1960s target fragments that Michael had envisioned, abrading one into almost-transparency to suggest a letting-go. And then, atop that abraded, letting-go target, I put in a little red chair.

That little red chair's for me. Notice how I'm not sitting there anymore.



"The NEW Narcissist," a rogue collaboration by Michael Tunk and Laura Tringali Holmes, 2014

Onward.

Links for the link-inclined, as promised:
The Target Practice Project blog, where you can read all about the Project, join the Project, ask for a couple of targets to collage, print out your own targets, and see some marvelous target collage work presented cohesively.
http://thetargetpracticeproject.blogspot.com/

The Target Practice Project Tumblr, where you can scroll through screen after screen of glorious collages using the core target image. I don't call it "One target, hundreds of ways" for nothing. It's a great way to follow the over-300 artists who have contributed and continue to contribute to the project:
http://thetargetpracticeproject.tumblr.com/

The collage work of Michael Tunk:
http://michaeltunk.tumblr.com/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/85668684@N03/
https://www.facebook.com/michaeltunkcollage

Coming Clean

This is how it starts. You look at something that you've been keeping close because, in that particular raindrop of time, it captured something essential. For me the "essential" usually comes swaddled in memory and memory is usually accompanied by something sensory--a sight, a sound, a smell. In the case of the collage series at the heart of this recounting, my Dirty Birds series, the ambience was tuneful, as I was in the midst of a Rufus Wainwright iPod marathon. There's more, though. There was Gloria Steinem. Her 1993 book Revolution From Within had been languishing in the to-donate-to-the-library pile. What made me pick it up and flip to the spread...that had a story about a woman named Laura...who had been on a personal journey not unlike my own? Some would argue that in life there are no coincidences. I didn't argue anything. With Rufus Wainright bouncing off my studio walls and my scissors on fire, I sliced all the Laura passages out of Steinem's book.

The Dirty Birds series was born. The pieces, all four of them, have graced the entry wall in my home since 2012.

But today they entered rehab. I invite you to witness the passage. If you have been following along with this blog, you know that, as the daughter of a narcissist, I have been engaged in a journey of recovery. It has not been pleasant but it has been vital. In recovery, the emotional as well as the physical sort, things can happen so slowly that you don't really notice any changes until you find yourself carefully un-framing a series of collages because it has suddenly become imperative to redo that which was made in a state of almost unbearable pain. So there you have it.

Let's have a look, shall we?

This is the original Dirty Birds #1. You can see Steinem's Laura text is prominent, just a little above center. 

Original (2012) Dirty Birds #1.
Paper collage with décollage on 5 x 7 canvas board with direct-to-paper
 gel ink transfers,  mica splits, charcoal, and beeswax.

This is the Dirty Birds #1 redeux. The Laura text has been covered up, and the textual focus has shifted to a larger concept--the American family. I've added a number of paper scraps as well as another mica split, some dye ink for that luscious blue, some chalk for sheen (which you can't see here), and more beeswax.

Revised (2014) Dirty Birds #1
Same as the above with the addition of more paper, mica, dye ink, and chalk
 

In the original Dirty Birds #2, the Laura strip is in relatively the same position. I remember circling the word "violin" in pencil because my parents used to make violin-sawing motions with their hands when they thought I was whining, and in 2012, even I was sick of putting up with me.

Original (2012) Dirty Birds #2
Paper collage with décollage on 5 x 7 canvas board. Antique papers, direct-to-paper
gel ink transfers, mica splits, charcoal, beeswax finish.

In the revised Dirty Birds #2, the Laura text has of course been removed and in its place remains only a fragment that more or less reads "will never again" (my motto). To obscure other text in the original version, I used sewing pattern paper, creating a matrix of broken lines with the pattern pieces. The blue ink from the first revision made it into this piece, too, and then I gave myself two stars (from a music practice book, vintage 1950s) for effort. One of the things that children of narcissists have to learn is how to be kind to themselves, and this seemed a good start to the exercise.

Revised (2014) Dirty Birds #2
Same as before, except more paper, including sewing tissue paper,
another mica split, some blue dye ink, and brown chalk
 

I haven't altered the third piece in the series. That doesn't mean I won't, just not today. I'm still kind of attached to Steinem's line about "the Confidence Clinic," and part of me wants to keep a remnant of how I used to be. We'll see how long that lasts.

Original (2012) Dirty Birds #3
Paper collage with décollage on 5 x 7 canvas board. Antique papers, direct-to-paper
 gel ink  transfers, mica splits, charcoal, beeswax finish.

Here's the last in the series, the original Dirty Birds #4. The Laura strip has migrated to the bottom in this piece.

Original (2012) Dirty Birds #4
Paper collage with décollage on 5 x 7 canvas board. Antique papers, direct-to-paper
gel ink transfers, mica splits, charcoal, beeswax finish.

And here's the revised version. New paper has been added, old text has been obscured, but mostly this revision is about the shift in contrast and in color. The blue is brighter and I sloshed some brown ink around until I got an effect that I liked. Less dark. Less stark. More like me. 

Revised (2014) Dirty Birds #4
As described above, with the addition of more paper, dye ink, and chalk.

But it didn't stop there. When I posted the link to this blog on Facebook, one of my friends pointed out that she really liked the Laura text line in the original Dirty Birds #4, the one that said "Having rescued herself, Laura is now the rescuer." It struck me that I really liked that line, too. Thanks to the magic of collage, I was able to restore it easily, simply scratching away the top paper to reveal the text underneath, which had been embedded in a protective casing of beeswax, rather like an artifact in amber.

Second revision of Dirty Birds #4
The new paper has been abraded and the Laura line about rescuing is back.
Because it was embedded in beeswax, the original text was always protected,
even as I was scratching away at the top layer.

Clearly a lot can happen in two years' time. To those who may be struggling, I say...stick with it. There is light, and there is hope, and there are definitely brighter and more vibrant blues.

As always, thanks for listening.




Blacks and Blues: Make Way for the Living

The following five pieces, all paper collage with mixed media, are about as subtle as this winter's polar vortices, neither finespun nor enigmatic. Instead they kick down the door with emotional weather. The good news is that when the wind dies down and the temperatures modulate--in other words, when you've done a series of 5 artworks that cut to the heart and chill to the bone--hey, whatever you're left with feels like Fiji.

But I get ahead of myself.

Some background: The 5 works in this series, which I call Blacks and Blues, are based on thousands of pieces of hand-transposed sheet music that I found when clearing out my father's house after his death, at age 90, in June of 2013. It's the very same house where I found the 1960s Sears archery targets, the very same ones that now form the core image of The Target Practice Project, the international global collage collaboration that I invite you to learn more about on my other blog, at http://thetargetpracticeproject.blogspot.com. But instead of dispersing the music globally, the way I did with the targets, I held it close. Very close indeed.

Because, unlike the targets, which were manufactured by Sears, these sheets of music were created by my father's hand.



"Under the Rainbow" #1/5
Blacks and Blues series, 2014
5x7 collage with mixed media on recycled canvas board (paper, pencil, dye ink, Micron pen, direct-to-paper gel ink transfer)
Papers: 1965 Foundations of Citizenship; 1978 A Field Guide to the Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds; 1923 Speedwriting Shorthand Dictionary; 1946 The Grade Teacher; 1837 Journal des Demoiselles; 1960s hand-transposed sheet music; 1880s receipt; 1960s Sears archery target; 1930s McCalls magazine; ephemera

And that matters. If you're a regular reader, you'll know the importance of "by-the-hand." If you're new here, I welcome you, and I'll summarize by saying that the children of a narcissistic parent exist as objects. No matter that a father may sit among walls replete with your artwork while he gobbles your offerings at every annual holiday table, he will never, ever know what you do. Never, ever will the products of your hand register, much less matter. In a family where one's father rarely let his children or his wife complete a sentence, where family members existed only as cardboard cutout props, I don't know why this surprises me.

But, I admit, it still does.



"You've Changed" #2/5
Blacks and Blues series, 2014
5x7 collage on recycled canvas board with vintage rubber stamp/pigment ink
Papers: Hand-transposed sheet music 1960s, Journal des Demoiselles 1837, McCalls magazine 1930, Irving Berlin Songbook 1944, Progressive Tailor magazine 1926, ephemera

That's the old news. The new news is that, when faced with the products of my father's hand, I did what he would never do with the products of my hand. I acknowledged them. I did so by incorporating them into collages that, in death as in life, he would never see. These were challenging pieces for me to create, as I precisely defined my twofold goals at the outset. 1) to be honest. 2) to be relentlessly honest.

Being honest requires telling the truth. And it takes some doing to drill down to that.



"It's Obvious" #3/5
Blacks and Blues series, 2014
5x7 collage on recycled canvas board with vintage rubber stamp/pigment ink
Hand-transposed sheet music 1960s, Journal des Demoiselles 1837, McCalls magazine 1930, More in Anger 1953,  Anthropologie soap wrapper, San Francisco tourist map, Practical Handyman's Encyclopedia 1960s, ephemera

What happened, and a cool thing about working in series is that it allows this to happen, is that, despite the challenge that I had set for myself, a conversation developed between myself and myself. It was a conversation where I got to complete a sentence. That felt pretty good. But what felt better was that I got to explore the highways and byways, and then to tell the truth. I don't know of anything more empowering than the truth.



"Turning and Boring" #4/5
Blacks and Blues, 2014
5x7 collage on recycled canvas board with vintage rubber stamp/pigment ink
 Papers: Hand-transposed sheet music 1960s, Journal des Demoiselles 1837, McCalls magazine 1930, More in Anger 1953, Practical Handyman's Encyclopedia 1960s, ephemera

Admittedly, the conversation is harsh. It is always harsh when one attempts to rewrite one's story. But the results are infinitely preferable to living the story that one has been given.



"Bow Before the Truth" #5/5
Blacks and Blues series, 2014
8x10 collage with mixed media on recycled canvas board (papers, molding paste, direct-to-paper gel ink transfer, packing-tape transfer, pencil, Micron, vintage looseleaf paper reinforcers)
Papers: 1930 McCalls magazine; 1958 More in Anger; 1837 Journal des Demoiselles; 1960s Practical Handyman's Encyclopedia; 1960s hand-transposed sheet music; 1960s Sears archery target; 1888 Julian's Interest Book

The power of art--of any expression, really--is that it allows the clearing of the underbrush and, in so doing, makes way for the living. We don't need to be rescued, we are the rescuers.

Onward.

Thanks, as always, for listening.
 

Under the Influence--Exploring the Primordial Heart with Dan Daughters

What is it about collages featuring knitwear that strikes a universal chord? My personal collage work can be a bit of an acquired taste, but then I go post a piece on Tumblr that I made in the style of American-artist-living-in-the-UK knitwearisto Dan Daughters and my phone rings off the hook, metaphorically speaking. Almost twice the number of people who usually like or reblog my work hit the button for the knitwear piece. Baffled? Yeah, a little, but only a little, because I happen to adore knitwear collage myself, especially as executed by Dan Daughters. Intrigued that apparently I'm not alone in my love-of-knitwear? U betcha!

Here's the knitwear piece that I posted on Tumblr. It's called "Double Knits" and has to do with sibling relationships. I made it from vintage knitting pattern paper sent to me by Dan Daughters himself, as part of a collaborative art project. Clearly, when I made this piece, I was channeling Dan, since I had been a fan of his "Knitted" series for quite some time. In my mind, you can't work with this sort of paper and NOT fall under the influence of Dan Daughters.



"Double Knits" / Laura Tringali Holmes / 2013



Now let's enjoy three of my favorite pieces from Dan Daughter's "Knitted" series:



"Ventriloquism" (Knitted #13) / Dan Daughters / 2014

"Confined" (Knitted #6) / Dan Daughters / 2013



"Apprehending"( Knitted #8) / Dan Daughters / 2013

But let's return to that universal chord. Dan has a few series (both collage and photographic), going on at any given time, but when he adds to his "Knitted" collage collection, feedback is always positive and often voluminously so. What are viewers responding to in these collages? Certainly there is the fragmentation and possession of space that one expects from any good collage. There is also a lovely juxtaposition of clarity and ambiguity created through thoughtful segmentation and--in Dan's case, in many pieces--facial reconfiguration. There's a sense of humor in many of Dan's arrangements, but sometimes there is pathos instead. Unfailingly, each image creates a new reality extending beyond the source materials.

"Abbreviation Reconciled" (Knitted #5) / Dan Daughters / 2013





But there's also more, I suspect. Many collages achieve what I've outlined above, but not all affect viewers to the point that they consistently feel compelled to express their approval through the "like" and "love" and "reblog" buttons endemic to the world of social media. So I have developed a theory.

When we see knitwear, we react with our primordial hearts.

And these reactions can be so natural and innate that they escape our notice, unless we fish for the "why." The flight or fight reaction comes immediately to mind as a corollary. We twig to danger, real or imagined, our brains gush cortisol, we outwit/outthink/outrun, and we survive another day. We don't really think about it except, perhaps, to be grateful that we are still alive. The smell of vanilla...to many it suggests safety and love--warm ovens in friendly kitchens and windows rimed with condensation. And then we have knitwear. A hat on a snowy day. A sweater against a chill wind. The memory of a beloved grandparent--not to mention Mr. Rogers--zippered into his or her cardigan. Could this be why Dan Daughter's "Knitted" series garners such a positive response among so many? These are troubled times for the world, after all. Cold. Competitive. Hardly snuggly. And this is on the outside. On the inside we must also cope with life's never-ending whirligig. We could all of us use a cardigan draped over our shoulders from time to time. And when the cardigan--or whatever knitwear configuration we are addressing--is manipulated through collage to move us a little closer to a realization of the emotional complexity of our primordial hearts...

Well, I hereby propose the concept of knitwear as collective archetype.

And on that note, a couple more of Dan's pieces to enjoy:



"Third Balloon: (Knitted #11) / Dan Daughters / 2013



 

"Discerning" (Knitted #10) / Dan Daughters / 2013

You can see more of Dan Daughters' work on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/dan.daughters?fref=ts.