Sometimes: Self-Portrait

The third week of collage class was self-portrait night. I’m a big journalizer and personal essayist, so I prepped my board by writing all over it and included transparencies made from drawings in a journal from my travels throughout Europe a few years ago. I have some wonderful rice paper with Japanese writing on it so I used strips of that and also used that to make one of my ubiquitous paper cranes. I used newspaper and imprints from newspapers to keep on with the writing theme and then tried to give it all a little more depth by adding some color with both transparent rice paper and more of the blotting and sponging techniques from the week before using bleeding tissue. The text of the background is as follows:

Sometimes I get lost on my way across town and I’m no longer at 14th and Olympic but on 23rd Street headed east across town back to between 1st Avenue and the River or I’m on McLaughlin about to turn up Holgate, but in either case I am headed towards homes that are no longer mine instead of to the restaurant or whatever place of business I am actually on my way to. I get lost and then I miss my turn and I swear a little under my breath but not like I did that one time on the FDR Drive when sweet little me shocked everyone else in the van with my profanity. And by kissing James. James with the long braid down his back and then the shaved head, with the piercings and that funny laugh. I told him I would love him forever and I meant it and I do. I love them all, carry them around with me in my heart and they jingle together in there like change in a pocket only I never lose them, the little fragments of my life and theirs intertwining, lacing and unlacing and sometimes breaking apart but scattered all throughout my consciousness like the little scraps of paper that line my walls and carpet my floor and are the fabric of my life, weaving together my thoughts, hopes, loves and ambitions. I can remember who I was and by extension who I am today when I read the words “Fun with Tesla Coils” on a post-it or see a ticket stub for Nightngale and remember how I ran home that night inspired and overjoyed and wrote to Lynn Redgrave that I too would start to live now, that I too would soar. And she believed me.

2008

Till I Loved, I Never Lived Enough

The second week of collage class, the aim was to experiment with using “bleeding” tissue (I might be tempted to refer to it as “tissue with fugitive color,” but that may be technically incorrect). So  I made the tissue bleed and I tried using the bleeding tissue to sponge the board, and I created tie-dye-like strips of tissue and generally had a ball making a complete and utter mess of both my board and my poor fingers. Seriously, if you ever work with “bleeding” tissue, wear gloves or be ridiculed for your multi-hued fingers for the following days.

I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of tissue paper for artwork purposes, so I through in some other stuff, too, a piece of rice paper with a beautiful Chinese character printed on gold and some candy wrappers with little love sayings: “Dare to love completely” courtesy of Dove Dark Promises, and “Till I loved, I never lived enough” courtesy of Bacci. Then for good measure and to keep with the theme that was emerging, I threw in parts of an old unsent love letter to my first love. This fit nicely with the Chinese character, too, because our one and only kiss was in Shanghai on a summer night.

Pie

This card is actually a study for a larger collage I am still intending to make. I learned my lesson with the card about broken pieces of wire and white glue, however; I should have realized that anything water-based would make the metal rust! Anyway, I think it was around Thanksgiving time and I was thinking about the taboos surrounding the last piece of what-have-you and got it in my head that it might be sort of sweet to express that even hell would be endurable if you were with that special someone. It’s a leap to go from pie to eternal damnation, I know, but sometimes that’s just how it is. 2007

Another Birthday

I initially conceived this piece a full year before it was completed. I was looking at another birthday and was confronted with a rackful of magazines trying to tell me about my birthday horoscope when I was also struggling with the concept of all the things that supposedly define me that most emphatically are not actually me. The piece is a mixed media assemblage comprised of three individual pieces. I start with a devotional candle around which is wrapped a “Prayer for Happiness” consisting of if then statements as follows:

if i lost 25 lbs, then i would be happy. if i got out of debt, then i would be happy. if i had a bigger home, then i would be happy. if i had better job security, then i would be happy. if i just didn’t have to worry about $$, then i would be happy. if i could fix my skin, then i would be happy. if i knew what i was doing with my life, then i would be happy. if i could buy a house, then i would be happy. if i could just get organized, then i would be happy. if i could break all my bad habits, then i would be happy. if i got in shape, then i would be happy. if i could make $$ doing what i really love, then i would be happy. if i knew what i really loved to do, then i would be happy. i have already climbed the great wall. anything should be possible to me. but i am not happy. now i am trying to make 1,000 paper cranes. if i can make them all, then i will be happy . . .

Next I turn to the mirror where I have a conversation that consists of me telling my reflection all the bad things I see and my reflection reminding me that according to the Bible, God made man and woman in His image and He made us well.

Finally, I triumphantly reject all that I am not in a mixed media collage with magazine clippings, cosmetics and all sorts of stuff.

I am not my job, my dress size, my height, my gender, my genetic make-up, my age, my zodiac sign, my IQ, my bra size, my hair color, my skin color, my sexuality, my failures or my successes, my decisions or choices, my car, my zip code, my interests, my history, my hopes and fears, what I eat, “damaged goods,” a stereotype, my hormonal system, my marital status, body type, my moods.

2006-2007