desktop collage (a study)

Really annoyed tonight, I made a collage directly onto the top of my desk.  When I finished (though it's not finished), I wrote this letter to fellow Bastardo Brother, D.P.:

So tonight's work taught me something about what I need to do to make the piece I've been developing in my mind since last summer. The very bottom layer needs to be pretty stable, like, all dark blues or something, and not too much information down there, just dark blues without too much happening. The layers then can build away from that dark blue, from zero information to information saturation. Basically, the under-collage that will inevitably show through in some areas needs to be there and be stable to help tie all the busy-ness together.

My plan is to cut out hundres of high information scraps, like busy flower beds, dress prints, any image that is very detailed and busy, and then to layer those images so that it's almost impossible to identify any single image, so that it all becomes a kind of cluster-fuck of pattern and image-density.

I also learned that the piece needs to be quite large so that it appears, from a distance, as a single unified block of an image, with no detail, just a unified brown block. I'm thinking, too, about increasing the density in the middle of the composition, like Guston's 60's abstractions with the dense middles. 

The full composition, as it is now... 

Tom Wesselman, Hal Hartley, Roy Lichtenstein

I've been watching Hal Hartley's movies, and sending facebook emails to some friends about his movies, about how off-kilter they are, and I've been getting back some insightful responses.  In case I make it sound like I've been doing some major, protracted thinking about this, the truth is that this business has only been on my mind for maybe a week.  In any case, tonight I was taking screen shots (screen grabs) of Hartley's movie, "Trust," you know, kind of looking at the scenes, the mise en scene, etc and so forth, and Tom Wesselman's classic Americana collages came to mind.  Here's a very famous Wesselman:

There aren't any obvious paralells going on.  I mean, there isn't anything in this image that screams HAL HARTLEY.  Nor the other way around.  But I think their works vibrate at similar frequencies.  The combination of staged trashiness, trashy Americana, and the curious mixture of delight and horror about their subjects...

(discussing the heroine's abortion in the diner)

Of course, the more obvious (pop art) comparison to Hartley would be Roy Lichtenstein.  Here's a very famous Roy:

The text in the thought-bubble might as well have been ripped straight from a Hartley film.  But of course, it's the other way around, historically speaking...

The Duffel Bag

It was my great honor and pleasure recently to design and help print the cover of a good friend, Luke Bloomfield's chapbook.  My signed copy says, "May many more covers follow.  Thanks dude."  You are most welcome, Luke.  Your book is awesome.  Here's the cover, letterpressed at Flying Object on a Vandercook 4T.

the pump house gang

I started altering books when I was 29, so that was, uh, lemme count backward, four years ago or so.  The first ones were books with dried beans embedded in them.  Then, years later, I got into embedding them with crushed cans.  Altering books is apparently "in" now.  Here's one that I haven't given away.

 The Pump House Gang 

Spaniels

The old man who lives next to me gave me this reproduction of hunting dogs, spaniels.  He used to raise them.  I said, thanks.  Then I took the painting home.  A couple days later I put pins in the dogs' eyes.  It was my birthday.  I felt entitled.  

 

poem-drawings

I made a bunch of poem drawings back in the 2005/2006 era.  They sat around, unnoticed, for a long while.  Then, last year, Action-Yes magazine published about six of them.  This is the first one I ever did.

 

an early classic

Here's a classic from my early period, circa 1999.  

 Marlboro Babies