Love is a Battlefield

I was so excited last week; we were finally going to work on boxes in collage class! But all week long I couldn’t think of what to do! I was so demoralized–this was the reason why I wanted to take the class! In the end, I loaded up my bags full of whatever I could find, grabbed the smallest of the cigar boxes I had lying around and headed to class only with the vaguest notion that I wanted to do something with gold wedding bands and making them look like chain mail.

Well, the result was somewhat surprising. The inside is a warm, inviting tableau with roses and a deep, rich purple color. The outside is wedding band-chain mail and .38 special shell casings.  I’d like to be able to say that this represents a tough attitude outside, protecting a soft interior, but I think it is actually more reflective of the idea that love is a battlefield. Sigh.

Since last week when I shot this, I have cleaned up the purple edges with some paint so it doesn’t look so sloppy.

Heart Triptych

My intention was to have this piece ready for Valentine’s Day this year, but that didn’t quite happen. I’m honestly not as bitter as this triptych implies; it was done sort of more tongue-in-cheek than anything else. I initially thought of shooting a canvas with a big heart on it thanks to those glorious hair metal lyrics of yester-year courtesy of Bon Jovi, “Shot through the heart, And you’re to blame. Darlin’, you give love A bad name.” Cheesy in every possible sense, I know, but it made me laugh and sometimes that’s all that counts.

No, in this case the reaction of the guy at the shooting range was priceless, too. (I really did shoot the thing using a Dirty Harry Special and .38 special ammo, thanks to my dad and the obliging folks at the Gun Store in Las Vegas. The emptied shells were used to make the “broken heart.” Not really sure why the gun shots ended up looking completely square. Must have been a really tight weave on the canvas.)

Gun Store Guy: So, who were you thinking of when you were shooting? [Looks at me proudly displaying my shot-up canvas.] You know what? Never mind. I don’t even want to know.

2008