I like this one because of the simplicity of the statement that I allowed to show through combined with the scary tribal type face image. But I also love it because of personal reasons, the woman is my ex-sister-in-law and she was the model who would be enthusiastic about most anything I would suggest to do, including getting her face painted as seen here. Also the background is a very memorable image from my ex-wife’s house. The blinds would make a beautiful pattern with the sunlight in the late afternoon and there was a hanging stained glass piece in the window that would cast it’s color with the blinds straight lines.
This is the second in a week long posting of a series I did from about 1986-1993. This is one of my favorite of the series because I love the transition of the ocean and the clouds into her body and the dimension brought in by the hedge/sidewalk image on the right side.
I love the simplicity of the statement as well. ‘Know you know’.
The Rejection Suite – A new week, a new series of old. This one is my ‘rejection letter’ series. I applied for full-time, college level teaching jobs in fine art for approximately 8 years, from 1985-1993. I never did land that job. I started to take the rejection letters and collage some of my rejected photos on top of the letter. I let show through from the letter a word or series of words that had power and meaning out of context.
This page was filled with questions that I answered by using letter press letters (the old fashion way, before digital, of graphic designing text with fonts). The model and I were at the beach in Santa Cruz, California and I took close ups of her against a cliff to collage. These were from the proof sheet that was made of the shots.
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.
This is the third in my week long series showing selections from the ‘sketchbook with voices’.
The top two photos were of friends of mine from the restaurant where I worked back in the 80s and 90s. The bottom photo was a family friend from church. I know what you are thinking; you took photos of a church friend’s cleavage? What sort of church did you go to? The answers are yes, I did and it wasn’t the church that was odd, it was me.
As is often the case the photos had no idea they were destined for each other’s company. At the time I had a big work table and I would have hundreds of photos on it at a time, sort of like a person with a messy desk having piles of papers. In this case the two bigger photos, of the breasts facing up and the cleavage, just happen to land close to each other on the table at some point. I saw that maybe they would match up and started to see the heart shape. I found the ROMANCE page shortly thereafter and it all made sense.
The angel type image at the top just added the final element both compositionally and thematically to the idea.
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.
Another weeklong series. This is from a book given to me way back in the 80s. It is called ‘Sketchbook with Voices’ and each page was blank for sketching. But at the top of each page was a statement, idea, assignment, or something else from an artist. I chose to make the sketchbook my photo sketchbook instead of my regular drawing sketchbook. I will post a page a day for the next week so you can see some of my faves from the series.
Definitely one of my freakiest collages. The hair pulled back so tight is what first drew me to the model. I simply created a different type of ‘sensual’ portrait here, with the senses all colliding out of synch, out of order, within her.
