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

Don't Get Jittery on Me--Part 7, or "Rage, Despair, and...We Hope... Eventually....Hope"

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.

And then I finished up my day with an editorial comment.

In my childhood life, there was always a test. I just had to shoehorn that in.

Enough for today. Thanks, as always, for listening, and for your kind support.

Part 8 in The Jitters resides here: http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2013/10/dont-get-jittery-on-me-part-8-or-hello.html

Don’t get Jittery On Me—Part 6, or “A Narcissistic Family Intervention”

In art as in life, physical boundaries are sometimes necessary when emotional and mental screens aren’t up to doing the job. Sometimes an extra layer of corporeal protection is required. Today I returned to a gate I had cut during Part 3 of this altered-book exercise in order to add just such a physical barrier to protect my book’s heroine. I found that the whole mess with the bevy of big black birds behind the gate needed to be encapsulated, restrained, before I could continue my storyline of the little girl’s epiphany and redemption. Today’s work was about making darn sure that the birds wouldn't be able to fly over the gate and peck their sharp beaks into our heroine’s eyes once she escapes. Hence the birdproofing.

 

Putting the cart before the horse as usual, this is where I ended up. Satisfactorily birdproofed.

I started by collaging the front of the gate, using paper from my treasured 1964 Official Guide to the New York World’s Fair.

This is how the gate looked when last we left it in Step 3 of this altered book process. You can read about that here: (http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2013/03/dont-get-jittery-on-me-part-3-or-im.html)

Since I appear to be developing a child theme in this book, I was happy to find a page in the Guide featuring Walt Disney's “It’s a Small World” attraction. If you are not familiar with the Disney parks, this is an amusement that, according to Wikipedia, “features over 300 brightly costumed audio-animatronic dolls in the style of children of the world, frolicking in a spirit of international unity, and singing the attraction's title song, which has a theme of global peace.” Frolicking. Peace. Yup. Global or personal peace.  I’m down with all of that, even if I find the theme song of the ride just a tiny bit crazy-making.

 

This is the "It's A Small Word" advertisement page that I decided to collage onto the gate I had constructed in a previous stage of  my altered book.

Here’s how the paper looked collaged onto the gate.

Note that the colors of the advertisement work with the protruding tab of the garish greeting card, which you can see sticking out of the book at the right, and which is described here: (http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2013/04/dont-get-jittery-on-me-part-4-or-big.html). It's no accident that this happened. As much as I liked the content of the ad, had it not worked with the garish tab, it would not have made the cut.

Next, I further attached a text snip of editorial comment to the page, as shown below, to push forward my book’s storyline. In the miniature sociological experiment that is a family run by a narcissistic father, it is well known that, because there is very little regard for the children, a daughter in such a situation will have lifelong chronic issues with self-worth. The little girl in my story is going to need a bit of help to effect her emancipation from the interior critical voice that was embedded by her family. This text snip establishes the baseline, and, not only that, interacts with the text that is already on the 1964  advertisement in a most serendipitious way. The advertisement text refers to the dolls in the attraction as  “…amazingly lifelike figures—the children.” What a wonderful description of what it is like to be the daughter of a narcissistic father. On the exterior, one appears amazingly lifelike indeed. On the inside, well, that’s another story.

 

Spoiler alert: The little girl will triumph in this story, have no fear.

 

The next step was to select the protective barrier, the birdproofing.   Because I collect paper, I was fortunate to have three gauges of mesh in my paper box from which to choose. As I weighed the pros and cons of each, I felt a bit like Goldilocks test-driving the Three Bears’ Chairs. It did occur to me at this point that my inner child is definitely influencing some of what’s happening in this altered book. Believe it or not, this was not apparent to me at the outset. Oh, muse of the  subconscious, I tip my hat to thy courage and perseverance.

I started with the smallest-gauge mesh. It kind of looks like window screen. “Not strong enough,” was my first reaction. Those birds could beat their wings right through it. My heroine deserves better.

This is a look at the smallest paper mesh. I am unimpressed.

 

The second paper mesh definitely felt more substantial. I consider it a bonus that I’m grooving on how the texture interacts with the blackness of the birds. This option has a fair chance of a possible maybe.  

 

The mid-gauge paper mesh might just be strong enough without being overwhelming.

 

The sheer weight of the third mesh attracts me at first, but then I realize the bigger mesh is not necessarily stronger. Those spaces are too wide open. Stuff could get through there. This will not give our heroine the security she craves. Out it goes. In a decidedly un-Goldilocks manner, I decide on the middle-gauge mesh.

 

Yikes! This is some honking big mesh!

 

Here is how the middle-gauge paper mesh looks in place on the page.

To finish off the edge of the page, and to keep going with a theme that I had introduced earlier, I wrapped the bottom edge of the page in one of my limited washi tape options, which you can see in the photo at the very top of this post as well as the photo that follows.

 

And here is what the page looks like turned. The black works well with the illustration of the birds and little girl as well as with the vintage paper of the book itself.

 

 

"Up went my feet, out went my arms, and PLOP!"

 

More to follow. Stay tuned. And thanks for following along. If you want to see the other parts in the series, just check out the archive bar at the left on the blog. It’s all there. Have you been inspired to alter a book by reading this blog? If so, please give me a head's up and let me know.

Interested in Part 7: You will find it here: http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2013/06/dont-get-jittery-on-me-part-7-or-rage.html