This Is Not a Photograph of Basquiat

Ornithology

"Please Don't Look" Is Being Looked At in Decatur...

 

“Please Don’t Look” is a one-of-a-kind altered book project.  The original book was a 1991 edition of “Gift From the Sea” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, which I altered with hand-cutting and heat-transferred images (most of which are either turn-of-the-century portraits or vernacular photographs of unknown women from the 1930’s and 1940’s).  In every image the women are evading the camera’s eye and all of the faces are hidden.  Most of the existing text is gone, leaving only a few phrases and words on each page which form a “found poem” about the unease and longing of women.  Here are a few images from the book, plus the full text of the found poem:

(Are we all under this illusion?)

porcelain perfection

smiling clock faces

I should have remembered long over-due unanswered letters and good intentions.

Empty, open, choiceless waiting.

But I want to be at peace

I want a singleness of eye

I want inner harmony

One can get along, ironically, and for the most part

we, who could chose simplicity, choose complication.

But I am starting, I am looking

The final answer, I know, is always inside.

I journey, up an inwardly winding spiral staircase of thought.

We are all alone.  That is all, alone

separated from my own species.

Here is a strange paradox.

How inexplicable it seems

alone, alone, alone.

“Mother,” “Wife,” “Mistress.”

split into a thousand functions

shattered into a thousand pieces.

Every relationship

            friend or lover, husband or child

every relationship seems simple at its start.

And then how swiftly it becomes complicated

But there are great needs

            a sense of identity

            something to say or give

            being loved for what one really is

can one actually find oneself in the mirror someone else holds up for one?

But we do demand relationships.

Each is sprawling and uneven, untidy, heavily encrusted

one forms ties, roots, the bonds are formed, many bonds, many strands

making up a web fashioned of love

            fragile, intricate and enduring

            humble and awkward

            beautiful

I will not want to leave it.

She was

and she is

and she will infinitely be

            sister

partner

wife

daughter

friend

stranger

grandmother, mother

saint, poet, woman

mother

grandmother, widow

girl

This book was recently selected by The Decatur Arts Alliance to be part of a lovely exhibition of artist's books on display July 19 - September 20, 2013, in the gallery at The Art Institute of Atlanta-Decatur in Decatur, GA.  The exhibit is part of the AJC Decatur Book Festival, the largest independent book festival in the country. Big thanks to jurors Brian Dettmer, Jerushia Graham and Beck Whitehead, for including me.  You can visit an online catalog for the exhibition here.

Collaborations

Sabine Remy, a resident of Dusseldorf, Germany, and a very talented scrapper, is a collaboration pal of mine.  Periodically, one of us starts a piece (perhaps the background, or perhaps some cut-out pieces to be incorporated into a collage) and sends it through the mail to the other, who then completes and names it, and then sends back the finished piece PLUS the starting pieces for a new collage.  It is a good day when I wander to my mailbox and find a mysterious, decorated envelope from Europe, always containing a completed collaborative piece AND a new, puzzling start for the next one.  I posted our first one awhile back, and here are some new ones:

 Take Care (Collaboration #2 between Sabine Remy and Lynn Skordal)

Alas, Poor Yorick (Collaboration #3 between Sabine Remy and Lynn Skordal)

Origins (Collaboration #4 between Sabine Remy and Lynn Skordal)

They Seemed To Have Many Human Characteristics (Collaboration #5 between Sabine Remy and Lynn Skordal)

You can find more of Sabine's work here.

Hollywood Guys

Walken, Keitel and Benicio...

Max Joseph Magazine

Since 2008, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich has published a beautiful series of magazines entitled "Max Joseph."  Each issue features a different theme or concept, and includes work from a variety of  illustrators, artists and photographers.  Issue No. 4 (2012/13) celebrates the Munich Opera Festival (Munchner Opernfestspiele), and features one of Nick Cave's fascinating "sound suits" on the cover.  On page 130 appears a collage piece I completed last year called Chair Series (The Singer, Not the Song), and I am thrilled to be included in this outstanding issue.

Danke sehr, Max Joseph!

Thank You, Atwood Magazine

Atwood Magazine is a beautifully-crafted "arts/fashion/music/literary" publication. The June issue investigates the theme of "daydreams," and includes some of my collage work and a little Q&A interview (at page 95).  Love the magazine, Atwood, and many thanks for including me.

Beekeeper

Uncle Fredo Believed in Fairies

Spider

Real People

"Real People, 2013" (an exhibit "celebrating the Arts through Faces and Figures") is opening on August 8, 2013 at the Old Court House Arts Center in Woodstock, IL (northwest of Chicago).  Very pleased that my collage piece, Pneumatic Drill, will be included.