This is day two of the week long series from my ‘Sketchbook with Voices’ a sketchbook given to me back in the 80s that had an assignment, idea, or statement about art at the top of each page.
The assignment was to make something with one hand so instead of using just one hand I decided I would only have one hand in the collage. I loved the idea of a hard to recognize hand coming out of a figure with no hands. I was turning the two body parts into a new, unknown body part.
Day after day I saw a new addition being built about two miles away from our house. The houses looked interesting, as much as a suburban tract house can. Finally a sign appeared showing an open house so I went to check it out.
The woman showing the house was tall and willowy with a decided stylish side to her. She showed me around and we got in a conversation about how she ended up selling real estate and her background as a model. We went out onto the little front porch and as we did so the light illuminated her face in a wonderful way. That clinched the deal for me and I asked her if she would be willing to let me take some photos of her. She agreed and that was that.
In the end, after many renditions and much more complicated collage efforts I kept coming back to the beautiful detail of her skin in that light. The color was fantastic but so was the texture all by itself so I landed on the monochrome/color diptych as a way of showing off both those elements.
