Here are two new collages with some mosaic variations. A one-minute slide show follows. Without spilling any beans I can say it’s about my book and the timing of assistance.
With newly revised timetable in hand, onward and upward. Must: write query letters; make progress on list of agents; write elevator speech for plot of novel.
In the meantime, I am soooo happy to report that my 30+ year old front crown was removed without mishap yesterday. The underlying post remained intact. No implant necessary. Yeah! I don’t even mind that the temporary crown, which I will get to wear to Los Angeles this month, is green. I kid you not!
I will leave you with two screen shots from yesterday and this thought: if I see Steve Bannon in handcuffs in November, Christmas will have come early — in spite of the faux outrage already being ginned up by the right wing.
It’s one thing to vary photo layers and filters endlessly in a kind of obsessive and focused play. It’s another matter altogether to manage the volume of results. I get attached to these collages! What am I supposed to DO with them?
Cleaning up the downstairs study closet affords one idea: group images and print on both paper and cloth. I found print-ready silk, cotton, stickers, and loads of archival paper. What am I saving it all for?
Printing from my phone is a pain in the ass in terms of centering or sizing images, so I may have to go back to downloading onto PC and working through Photoshop elements. Ugh. I really want to preserve a body of work and in so doing, create another body of work, but I want simplicity of process!
Must also consider copyright issues. I cannot sell collages that use recognizable and/or untransformed work by other artists. Is that MOST of my collages? Maybe.
My vision of small booklets posted for purchase gets quickly dashed.
Today it’s wet. It rained hard throughout the night. I know because I was awake for a lot of it.
I’ll close with a few screen shots. Food for thought and images of — what else? — cloth!
After dinner while K watched a taped Patriots game, I made a slideshow. It’s in the middle of the post. A few stills follow.
Montage of old collages about fear
But first the original collages of the running girl. In them, her urgent need to escape emerged from the iterations. The double/triple exposures that form the basis of the slideshow, seemingly of their own accord, continue that feeling. The way she comes in and out of view heightens the sense of imminent harm and also, perhaps, points to the way trauma damages one’s ability to stay in the body.
I couldn’t sleep last night. Eventually got up and read. I came across an article about Emmett Till which you can read here.
Short version: a journalist hired to write about Till’s murder for Life Magazine (this was after the two men were acquitted), couldn’t get releases from two OTHER murderers, so he just WROTE THEM OUT OF THE STORY.
The journalist could be tried (could have been? Sorry, it was 3:00 in the morning) for accessory to murder after the fact.
The current article makes plain that not only was it journalistic malpractice and very possibly illegal, the omission generated more terror in the Black community than had they known there’d been four perpetrators.
If two men were capable of THAT, what’s next?
Paris Collage Collective prompt. I now see the girl running in negative space with leaf as hair. Do you?
Maybe the sense of haunting had something to do with the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. K and I watched a Frontline episode — America After 9/11. Oh my god the lying politicians. The lazy press. It underscored a pithy tweet I read which said that we would have been better off as a country if we had literally done nothing.
The personal impact of the tragedy is rendered beautifully in this memoir piece: Hero by Liz Ackert.
Four of the hijackers spent their last night on earth in a discount hotel less than a mile down the road.
The place has long since been torn down.
P. S. Just went back and found a post about dreams the week before 9/11. And a Tarot card pulled (The Tower). Interesting to look back. A little haunting.
On Friday, K and I were up in Winchester buying clethra and oak leaf hydrangea for the shady corner of the new fence. The garden staff was sliding pots into dense rows. Puzzling. I wondered what was going on.
“We’re getting ready for the hurricane.”
“What hurricane?”
You mean to tell me I consult Twitter for two hours a day and heard not a blip about Henri?
Time to add WBZ to my timeline.
Anyway, we entertained Friday night (it’s been so long!) and planted on and off on Saturday, all while keeping a close eye on the weather reports. Upgraded to hurricane! Sliding west! Not getting a direct hit here in the Boston area, as it turns out. The eastern side passes over us now, delivering intermittent, heavy rain.
It’s a nice sound, the rain. A good day for: a lap blanket, crossword puzzles, and soup!
This happened BEFORE the storm, by the way. What can I say? Fence not even two weeks old and it’s the third time a neighbor’s branch has taken out a panel. Excuse me for being annoyed.
I don’t know what it says about me, but untying that crocheted ribbon was the most exciting thing I’ve done in a long time!
Already applied a speckled piece to a moon in progress. Immediate elevation of the surround. Reminds me of a traditional quilter who once opined that she included a few Kaffe Fassett squares in every composition because they reliably improved the piece as a whole.
I kind of love the blue shawl’s accidental contribution here. Windows are new.
Lastly, I am more than a little surprised that I’ve continued with the Paris Collage Collective’s weekly challenge. It’s almost September! Look at me! (I abandoned Roxane Gay’s monthly book selections way back in May. Found that keeping up had a way of turning reading into homework. Who needs that?).
I’ve bounced between purely digital compositions to purely paper to amalgams. The digital layering that includes quilt-photos and/or a paper collage seems to offer the most depth.
Also, it’s getting so that when I select photos for a double exposure, previous prompt responses come up. That’s fun. I notice other contributors including past-week elements as well.
Check out #pariscollagecollective on Instagram. Almost all of the contributions are impressive.
Made the above (not a prompt response) before I knew about the hurricane. But it must have been in the ether.
Enjoy your Sunday! If you’re in the northeast, hope the storm’s impact is minimal!
From now on 4/20 will live on not just as a day to celebrate pot but as a day to remember that a murderous cop was held to account.
I cried when I heard that the jury found Chauvin guilty on all three counts. A choking ugly cry. Gasping.
While I know this is not the end of the war (Al Sharpton) and that the verdict was only possible because it was captured on video, seen the world over, followed by a year of protests and the collapse of the blue wall (Jason Johnson), I want to breathe the relief of a decision well made.
Yes. Yes we get how broken we are that the outcome was not certain here. But let me exhale with gratitude.
Thank you jurors! Thank you “bouquet of humanity” aka witnesses who took the stand! Thank you remarkable prosecution team! Thank you protestors! Thank you cops who took the stand and spoke the truth!
Tomorrow I will lament the fifteen year old girl who was shot yesterday. Tomorrow I will share my outrage at how swiftly Republicans are seeking to outlaw filming police and protests but today: relief.
I shared this 53 second video over on Instagram but I’ll share it here, too. Synchronicity turned the Vogue model’s outstretched arms into something reminiscent of a prone, injured body as the day went on. Unintended but fitting.
