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.
 

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.