Laura Tringali Holmes: cut-and-paste

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

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.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

The Art of Target Practice

UPDATE: The Target Practice Project now has its very own blog, where the work of participating artists will be featured. You can follow along here: http://thetargetpracticeproject.blogspot.com.

While other kids were out doing social pre-teen things, I was being dragged around an archery trail or instructed how to man a fishing rod stuffed into a sand spike. Such is the life of a daughter of a sportsman. Of course there were other things I would much rather have been doing, but those things didn't matter and certainly nobody ever asked me about them. And I had learned at a much younger age not even to bring them up. This is because a parent afflicted with narcissism doesn't mirror back the child to the child as is desirable and normal, so what the child wants or needs simply doesn't matter. No, to a narcissistic parent, the child IS the mirror, reflecting back the parent's own issues and interests, in this case, bows and arrows, guns, fishing and camping gear, and boats.

Me in impossible shoes at the archery range at Ferry Point Park, Bronx, New York

My father left behind all this stuff when he passed away, at 90, in June of this year, but it was the tall stack of 1960s archery targets from Sears Roebuck, hidden behind some ancient fish coolers in the garage, that got my attention. As a collagist, I am always on the lookout for old paper with interesting patterns. Still, I didn't grab the targets right away. Instead, over the next several weeks I entered into a polite hands-off relationship with them, where I would nod in their direction as I entered and exited my father's house to perform my clean-out chores. Under self-scrutiny, I see that my relationship to the targets is not unlike the adult relationship I had with my father, especially in respect to my artwork, which he never once asked to see or even noticed on the walls of my home. Just as my pre-teen essence was irrelevant to my father, so was my adult essence. My father died without ever acknowledging even a single product of my heart, spirit, or hand.

Archery targets, vintage 1960s, from Sears, Roebuck & Co.

But now I had these targets, and something grand in me wanted to make the two divergent threads—one of my artwork, one of my father—intertwine. You could say that I saw redemption in the crosshairs. Time was offering me an opportunity to create a congruence that had not existed in my life, and so I pulled back the metaphorical bow string and shot the arrow. I snapped some photos of the pile of targets, posted them on Facebook, and put out a call to my artist friends both here in the States and internationally. Who wanted to collage some targets? I started a group on Facebook, called “Target Practice,” where people could post their work. Within a few days I had mailed out almost 150 targets. Finished target collages have already started to roll back in. It is amazing what artists are doing with them.

Targets on their way out the door

These aren't memorials to the past, just enchantment in the present. This gives me comfort and great hope.

You can link to the Facebook group here, https://www.facebook.com/groups/161991817319872/ but for now here's a look at some of the great work that's already been posted. Stay tuned for an update as more work arrives.