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.

On Intentional Design

Collage background by Margaret Orr (http://hogret.deviantart.com)

In my last blog post, I rotated a collaged background through all four orientations to find the one I liked the best. That's it, shown above.

Collaged background with yellow ochre glaze

To unify the diverse elements, I gave the background a couple of thin washes of glaze. I like how it turned out. I used yellow ochre glaze because not only did I want to warm up Margaret's umber splotches, I wanted to highlight the tones of the various papers, and I know yellow ochre will do that. I sing the praises of yellow ochre glaze.

While working with the glaze, my imagination was exploring different concepts for the piece, as inspired by the background paper and color. The thing about collage is that it is inclusive of virtually all choices, and in my shop I have collections chock-full of choices. Depending on the day, all this choice can be liberating or frustrating. Mostly it's frustrating, and I find that by working “intentionally” (as opposed to “intuitively”), I can give myself both the creative direction I need and the potential to maximize the development of my ideas.

Here's how it works in practice. Consider the process of selecting an old photograph for a focal image to place atop this background. I've already noted in my last blog that I wanted to feature that bit of text on the right about the “power of the magic of believing.” While the message of this text could easily lead one to think of cheery birds and butterflies, there is another direction here begging to be explored.

Girl with Coral Beads, collection of Art-e-ology

When searching through stock photos for images that might be complementary to the second interpretation, I came up with pictures like this.

Blank-Staring Family, collection of Mrs. Inman

And this.

Article by Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone magazine, July 7-21, 2011

And then, as a sort of test drive, I snipped around the image and put it down on a magazine article that I happened to be reading...and isn't it coincidental that the colors in the magazine drawing and the colors in Margaret's background are similar? By George, I've got it! My vote is now officially cast for the family with the blank stares. As I attempt to incorporate this photo into the collage, here's the concept I'll be keeping in mind: the power of media in our belief systems, how and whether it causes magical thinking, and what that thinking might look like. Stay tuned...!