I worked at a restaurant named Eulipia in San Jose, California from 1981-1994 while I was going to graduate school and starting out as a college art instructor. I finally left when I moved to Tulsa to start a new career in Interactive Design.
This collage was a result of a photo shoot with three of my co-workers from the restaurant. We did the shoot in one of their backyards while they were sunbathing on a hot summer day. I had been creating a series of collages that used body part close ups combined with sky or other neutral colored backgrounds.
‘A Seldom Seen Stretch of the Eulipian River’
This collage resulted from having all the photos on my drawing board which was a large door actually attached to two drawing board bases. As I laid them out I started seeing a flow to the images. I originally had only one row, with the body below and the sky above. At that point it seemed like a landscape. But I had a lot of photos from the shoot and I laid out a second row to see if those photos might have a different rhythm and flow to them.
I got the idea to turn the top row over and the blue matched up and became a river in my mind. Then it was just a matter of finding the right place for each photo so the flow of the river was pleasing to my eye.
The idea when I took the photos making up this collage was to get my client up against one of her favorite pieces of furniture, a large armoire / wardrobe closet. Later, when I cut up the proof sheet into pieces to do a mock up of the piece I realized how crucifix-like the pose was. This led me to this page and it’s challenge to think about beauty and pain/hurt together.
We were in San Francisco for a mini vacation and took a tour of the south of Market gallery area. This San Francisco gallery was airy and the assistant had great eyebrows and there was an interesting painting with the word penis in it and there was a colorful potted tree outside and a wall of tile and next thing I know I have a collage.
She was waiting for her man, a traveling sportsman, the longest they had been apart, she had a new car, was hoping he would like it, he was tall, buy maybe not tall enough, she goes to school full time and works full time, it’s been hard but she is excited to see him, she was hoping she was in the right place.
