Blind Perfectionist

"Blind Perfectionist," Laura Tringali Holmes 2012
---
Paper collage with décollage and in-place acrylic-gel transfers on 8 x 10 canvas board
with pencil and marker
 Papers: 1930s sales receipt; 1923 Speedwriting Shortland Dictionary; 1978 A Field Guide  to the Nests,
Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds; Irving Berlin Songbook; other papers 1800s - 1980s.
 

Many moons ago I was quite the perfectionist, but no more. Perfectionism is a righteous place in which to dwell. It's so utterly morally unshakeable. So judgmental. So paralyzing in its detail. So...blinding.

I changed up my ways thanks to an online housekeeping column, written by Marla Cilley, which I started to read when I sunk to the bottom of the barrel of overwhelment by the act of single-mothering three children.

Marla's advice was that it was better to take a lick at a snake than to sit there in paralysis and allow oneself to be bitten.

This piece is about taking a lick at the snake, and about the smoke and mirrors of the details of perfectionism.

Hope you enjoy. And thanks, as always, for listening.

p.s. In case you don't follow regularly, the "how to make a gel transfer" tutorial appears a few blogs ago, here: http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-make-gel-transfer.html

Update September 5, 2012:

This collage, "Blind Perfectionist," was given a Daily Deviation Award on 9-5-2012 at the site where I keep my gallery (http://lauratringaliholmes.deviantart.com/). I've received a slew of favorable comments, including some from artists who typically don't much like collage. I feel great about the approval, but also great about turning people on to the boundlessly expressive medium that is collage.

This is what the site says about the Daily Deviation choice process:

"The Daily Deviation is a daily feature chosen from the galleries here on deviantART. A small assortment of submissions are chosen each day by a select group of staff/volunteer members who wish to showcase an image which they found impressive or otherwise interesting enough to deserve being brought to the attention of the community-at-large."

I am honored by the recognition and deeply grateful.

 

Big Blue Moon

Gel transfers are so much softer than tape and acetate transfers, and sometimes that softness is just right. Acetate transfers were all the rage a while back, and I know you can burn the edges of acetate and underpaint it for goulish effects and roll it up into Christmas ornaments and such. And nothing beats a packing tape transfer for adding gray tones to the work (not to mention the joy of upcycling such a commonplace material).

But I find myself, these days, returning to the humble (albeit labor-intensive) gel transfer for pure workability. In particular, there are no hard edges to figure out how to hide. Which can be a Big Thing. You know, you have something to say, and you want to say it, to flat-out-work-to-express that "something"  to the best of your ability. Everything you know about various techniques cooks in the background (and I hasten to add that I love learning new techniques), but at the end of the day, it's not really about the techniques, is it?

Here's one of my recent collages that incorporates a gel transfer. That would be the lady, whose skin you can see through to the paper beneath. It's easy to lose count of the number of coats it takes for me to do a transfer (because there's so much drying time in between the multiple thin coats of the gel medium), but it's safe to say this one took at least half-a-dozen.

Big Blue Moon, 5 x 7 paper collage with mixed media. Laura Tringali Holmes, 2012

The photo is one from my personal collection. No idea who this lady is--I pulled her from a sun-scorched box at a flea market, and I'm delighted that I can keep her spirit alive in my work. The background paper is from a book of manners for French jeunes fille published in the 1800s. The moon is cut from handmade paper that has blue-next-to-green, my favorite color combination. The little text strip at the bottom is from a New York plantsman's catalog, also from the 1800s.

What you can't see is the sound that filled my ears while I was constructing this piece (in my loft, I typically work to a lovingly constructed iPod playlist, simply called "Collage"). Cheers in particular to Joni Mitchell's "Night Ride Home," and this lyric in particular:

Once in a while
In a big blue moon
There comes a night like this
Like some surrealist
Invented this 4th of July

 
As always, thanks for tuning in.

The Un-BIRD-ening Continues

An array of bird collages has winged it's way into reality since March. I posted the first two pieces in this series in a previous blog: http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2012/03/un-bird-ening-in-spring-2012.html. I'm now back to add another five nestlings to the series. There are two more in the pipeline and then...perhaps...I will be done.

Fly, birdies, fly! 

"I Still Laugh"
Paper collage with mixed media and ephemera on canvas
board. Old papers, including text from 1960s beauty manual
and gel transfer of woodpecker from old Audubon flashcard.
Acrylics, pens, and mica dust.

"The Lionhearted"
The key to the title is in the little lion in the tape-transfer cage.
Gel transfer of finches from Audubon flashcard set, old
papers, tape and acetone transfers, acrylics, pens, charcoal
pencil. Big text snip from an old Irving Berlin songbook.
Beeswax finish. On deep canvas.

"I Want to be a Frontiersman"

Gel image transfer of dove from old Audubon flashcard,

antique papers, rose tissue, acrylic paint, inks, charcoal

pencil, glaze and metallic pens, mica dust, and beeswax

on deep canvas

"The Righteous Robin"
Gel image transfer of bird from old Audubon flashcars,
old papers,  paper  napkin,  acrylic paint, inks, charcoal
 pencil, gold pen, mica dust, and beeswax finish, on
deep canvas

"A Well-Loved Heron"
Hand-painted paper and mixed media collage on canvas
board, gel image transfer of bird from Audobon flashcard
overpainted with fuzzy sweater and other
acrylics, old papers, charcoal pencil, markers, stamps, inks

Memento Vitae

This is the last installment of the story of the work I did on Margaret Orr's collaged background. (Margaret's work may be found here: http://hogret.deviantart.com) The progress had some interesting twists and turns—experimenting with a brand new transfer material, for example, and then stumbling upon the works of Mexico City “mechanic artist” Betsabee Romero in a local museum shortly thereafter. In a way, Betsabee Romero joined Margaret and me as a collaborator on this piece, albeit unwittingly. Influence as Collaboration is an interesting idea, and one I want to think more about. But back to this piece. My original idea in working on this collage was to comment on the role of mass media in contemporary society. Somewhere back in my (admittedly short) list of blogs, I talked about intentional design and how it helps me with focus. I wonder if I would have responded as I did to the Romero work if I hadn't had the concept of this piece implanted in my mind during the initial stages of design. I don't think so. I think I just might have missed the satisfying “ping” of puzzle pieces falling into place. And so the learning process continues.

My botched attempt at image transfer on the collaged background

Anyway, the above photo shows where I left off a couple of blogs ago, a good example of Image Transfer Gone Bad. No fault of the transfer material (Lesley Riley's TAP), I hasten to add, just what happens when one fails to practice first on scrap.

Betsabee Romero's televisions with etched screens and video

And the installation shown above, Celosias Interiores (Interior Lattice Windows), is what I saw at the Betsabee Romero exhibit at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, NY, shortly after beginning work on the piece.

.A small acetate transparency over the family members reiterates the text. Later on I swapped it out for a transparency of the Magic Message.

When I resumed work on the piece, it became the most natural thing in the world to insert the photo of the Blank-Staring-People into the frame that I had inadvertently created while attempting the image transfer.

. The mica is the brown sheet material...you can see it best overlapping the shoulder of the boy.

Influenced as I was by the television installation at the museum, I started to glue bits of sheet mica around the heads of the family members. The background began to take on aspects of a telvision screen, and the mica cracks were just perfect for what I was and am feeling about television. It's really cool, and the photo doesn't do the mica justice.

I liked where this was going, but there was still work to be done. Two things bothered me. The brown splotches from the original background, which I had liked at first, now looked haphazard. I had covered up a few of the splotches so they had lost their original impact and now seemed to me to be just “there.” Also, the blue scissor tape on the left and bottom of the background had gotten lost. It didn't relate to anything else in the collage. My eye kept sticking in these places. I needed round and I needed blue.

The finished piece, entitled Blank Stares

Flash onto the televisions of my childhood. Rabbit ear antennas! I hauled out an old Popular Science Monthly magazine (1939) to search for something that I could convert into an antenna base. I found it, snipped it, and then discovered that a V from a headline would do very well for the rabbit ears.

As a last touch, from the same magazine, I cut up some blue borders and made them into legs for the television. I went skinny with the legs because I wanted the tension of my newly constructed television looking like it could come crashing down at any moment. And I liked the way the skinny legs framed the extra little message at the bottom about “good health.” That was a bonus that I didn't see until the very end.

I guess this tells you something about how I view mass media. Thanks for listening.

Listening to the Paper

Light Unlimited, 2010
Gel transfer on paper

I love to collage with scrapbooking papers. They're delicious confections of color and line. Cheap, too—on sale, a handful of small change will buy a big 12 x 12 sheet. Admittedly, scrapbooking papers can be a bit of a challenge to work with, especially when those papers have forceful patterns. But even neutral scrapbooking papers pose design risks. Every paper—indeed every art material—has its own place in the vast continuum of visual meaning, and just because a paper is beige with a muted vintage-looking script doesn't mean it will not assert itself, sometimes in aggravating ways, in your piece of work.

Man of the House, 2010
Acetone & gel transfers/paper

One way to make the paper behave—and a popular trend in recent mixed-media publications—is to tone it down with a slap of paint. For those who prefer to let their work evolve spontaneously, this treatment takes away much of the risk of the paper overwhelming the work.

It also takes away much of the spirit of the paper.  

Two Medicine Lake, 2010
Tape transfer/old postcard/paper

A different approach is to forgo that coat of paint in favor of hosting—before gluing—a heart-to-heart talk between the piece you want to make and the paper you're thinking of using. Put it all on the table! Proportion, directionality, balance, tension, composition, and more, if you can think of it! What does the paper offer to your idea? How can you best harness its aesthetic to serve your concept? If there's a balance to strike, where exactly is it?

Who knows what will happen if you let the paper speak.