Every day this week I am going to post a page from this book. I found it back in the 80s. It is a hobby book for young children, helping them learn how to take photos. At the time I wasn’t a big believer in all the ‘rules’ of photography (I am still not)and appropriated it by putting my own ‘bad’ photographs over the photos in the book. It was my way of playing with the ideas of ‘good photography. Come back every day all week to learn my way of taking a good photo!
This book was exhibited in an exhibition entitled ‘children’s toys’ at the Young Gallery in Saratoga, California in the early 90s.
This collage is in a book called ‘Sketchbook with Voices’. It is actually a sketchbook of blank pages with an idea, question, statement or assignment by an artist. I got it way back in the 80s and decided to use it for photo sketches instead of regular drawings. This image is probably the only image in the whole book that has any drawing in it at all.
The black and white image in the background was taken by me during a photo shoot with a friend. My sister-in-law at the time knew that I liked tan lines and took the color photo of her friend while on vacation in Mexico and sent it to me.
You can see digital versions of this type of image, people in a museum looking at some huge photo on the wall, which is actually the photo of the person making the image. Just remember where they got the idea, ok? LOL
For many years after we moved from California and I wasn’t creating art work for exhibiting and selling I was creating backgrounds for my computer. I probably made at least one a day for many years.
The original photographs were not mine, but were taken from online fashion photographs in most cases, then used in the collage. Click on the image then go to ‘all sizes’ to see it as large as it should be seen. Use it as a background yourself if you would like.
We were staying the night at the Inn at Price Tower, Frank Lloyd Wright’s one and only freestanding ‘skyscraper’ in the world (it’s 16 stories high so it isn’t crazy tall by any means). It is about 50 miles north of Tulsa in a town called ‘Bartlesville’ which was the founding home of Phillips Petroleum. It has an art center on the first 2 floors along with a gift shop. We always find unique and interesting things in the shop when we go there and this time we found an engaging and happy store clerk along with the usual stuff. She said one of the statements in the piece to us and I kept hearing the rhythm of it in my head after, but with different content each time and that was the basis for the other ‘truths’ in the piece.
I had gone down to Oklahoma City from my home in Tulsa (about 100 miles) to drop off my presentation for the upcoming Photoslam event. I decided to take the day and check out some galleries down that way, something I really hadn’t done before.
When I entered the ‘Untitled’ [art space] gallery this woman was at the door greeting people, explaining the current show, etc. She was very helpful about explaining how the show came about (it was a year end showing of multiple grant recipients’ work).
We got to talking about me being an artist since I had my camera with me, and I asked her if she was as well. She turned out to be an art historian in training, going to college.
The gallery was somewhat dark, but there were large windows in the front that let in great ambient light. Her eyes, as is obvious, were brilliant blue. I told her about my reason for being in OKC, and explained the ‘truth’ project I would present at the show. I asked her if she would be willing to pose for a collage from the truth series as well and she thought it would be a cool idea.
One of the artists in the gallery had large constructions. One of the constructions had a shredder attached to it that was churning out shredded paper very slowly. Photos of that, with photos of her were the perfect combination for what I learned about her as we talked; her life, doubts, fears, wonderings, etc.
My daughters’ threw a party at our house back in 2002 on the last day of school. One of their friends had her whole arm tattooed. I saw her sitting in this chair and next to her I could see the same colors from her tattoo reflected subtlely in the wall beside her.
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.
Yawning in the McDonalds restroom midway through the 24 hour bus ride home from Disney World. The restroom was so visually vibrational I was just glad I kept my eyes shut for most of the time I was in there. I liked the contrast between the red and the BW.
