Recreating Reality

Catrin Weiz-Stein is a graphic designer living in Switzerland. Like the last amazing artist featured here, she specializes in collage using vintage photos, but her work takes place in Photoshop. She says she loves taking images apart and putting them together again her own way.


Family Portrait

So, the first thing I have discovered in thinking about collage is how difficult it is to put strange, unexpected things together, and not have them look like you just glued a pile of your favorite photos on the same page. And the images in this post all have the smooth, painstakingly-layered effect of oil paintings--which comes from the painstaking process of layering in Photoshop.
In Family Portrait, the husband’s jacket is open to reveal the feathers of his chest, the beautiful siren on his arm wears a flower-lined hat of wings, and they pose together with two children and a third on the way. On the way. The absurdity and surreal qualities of the family somehow blend right into the Renaissance style of the scenery and of the Siren’s face.

The siren wife and mother looks quite poised, very upstanding. But in mythology, it’s not the kindest women who take that form. Perhaps the to me obviously rakish personality of her husband led some poor maiden to call upon the power of a siren to take him in and destroy him. Though, in this portrait, he seems quite unaware of his dark fate.

So, maybe she really has settled down? Maybe she isn’t bent upon his destruction? The (hysterical) poem by Margaret Atwood seems apt here--or at least, I never miss a chance to pull it out:

Siren Song

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:
the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls
the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember
Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?
I don't enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.
I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song
is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

At last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.



“Will you get me out of this bird suit?” she asks. Well, it seems like something this lady might say.



The Wishing Seat

The Wishing Seat takes us out of the sky and into the depths of the sea, where, in mythology, there are other ladies singing dangerous songs and reaching up from the depths to grab those sailors. This maiden, however, with her octopus tresses, seems happy to dream of her hero--to dream him (or her) into existence. I’ll just note here that when my hair does that, the effect isn’t half as beautiful.
Catrin has made several ladies who can create the whole world on their own:


The World
(The above image has been made into a Tarot card. Catrin says: “The woman symbolizes the world and the universe. She is a dancer, almost weightless and in harmony with her life.”)


Her Garden




The Voyage.

The Voyage was born from an old postcard of a child holding a drum which sparked her imagination. She replaced the face of the child, which she says represents the child inside all of us, added the bird, to represent opportunity, and created the rich colors. Then she filled the drum with life, experiences, possibility. Again, the creative power of dreams, the endless possibilities of the world...



Cowboy


Getting Wet

Catrin’s gorgeous works can be purchased on Red Bubble and Squidoo, and she was just featured in the May 2010 issue of Pink Panther Magazine.


Last Night, in My Dreams

Fabricating Reality

Today’s post was embarrassingly easy to write. The artist did almost all the work herself. Each image she’s made (combinations of drawing, water-color, and collage, often with moving parts attached) comes with the story of its characters attached--marvelous, fantastical stories. All I’ve really done here is point out the places where it became clear to me that she was, in fact, somehow writing about my family...



Aurelia and her Jelly Cruiser

(Please don't miss the amazing bit of technological wonder that is the 'cruiser' in the above image.)

Here is a little bit about the artist, Winona Cookie, in the words of her handler, Ramona Szczerba:

“There aren’t any castles in the suburbs of Delaware and there aren’t any haunted mansions with gloomy mansard roofs, either, and because that fact was nearly too tragic for me to bear as a child, Winona Cookie came to comfort me.
Appearing in a shower of cookie crumbs one rainy thunderstruck afternoon, she has been my lifetime antidote to boredom. While I trudged through graduate schools and internships, Winona has followed her own path, leaving a trail of fanciful stories, watercolors, ink drawings, collages and jewelry in her wake. She favors the darkest faeries, legendary women, arcane subject matter and inventors that never were. She is currently obsessed with the steampunk genre and is running me ragged with collages and stories. They are frankly beginning to pile up! We live in San Diego where I practice psychotherapy and try to find a place for my ill-tempered cat to sit in my studio.
About my pieces:
I work in both watercolor and collage. My watercolors are generally painted ink drawings. Collages are often done on stretched gallery canvases that have been painted with acrylic. I construct my weird little scenarios, portraits and worlds from the vast and groaning collection of vintage photos and images that I obsessively collect from the internet and elsewhere. I add all manner of items from my studio: dresden trim, charms, watch gears, crystal gems, ribbons, bits of lace and vintage ephemera. Oftentimes, originals are interactive pieces with moving parts. Stories suggest themselves as I am working on the piece. I often have no idea what direction they will take once I begin writing them, so I can only conclude that I am channeling your imaginations!”

See?

And so here is a little about me, illustrated and written by her (she’s clairvoyant! I give my word, I’ve never met her!...But it's all true...):



Zoe’s Magic Hat

“I was always told that my Great great Aunt Zoe had quite the spirit of adventure, so it must have come to a surprise to no one when she slipped away from the safe enclave of her Ladies’ College group during the obligatory European Tour. Deciding to opt out of a stultifying march through the Musee d’Histoire Marseilles, Zoe snuck off and found herself in Le Cours Julien and the flea market she found there was to change her life forever. Tired, dusty and a tad tipsy after a few glasses of Pernod and several Gauloises at a dingy but charming Bohemian café, she was about to attempt navigation back to her hotel, when a worn pair of costume wings caught her eye in a nearly empty stall on the outskirts of the flea market. Crafted of enormous dusty feathers, looped together with a crumpled band of once-elegant cream satin and hoisted unceremoniously on a wrought iron hat stand, something about the wings seemed to draw her towards them. “Take them, take them”, muttered the old gypsy woman in broken French when Zoe inquired after the price. “They were my nephew’s, he’s glad to be rid of them, I just want enough for some bread for my dinner.” What could be a better souvenir of the freedom of her off-the-beaten-track afternoon? She quickly fished a few centimes out of her purse and handed them to the old woman who immediately thrust the dusty top hat into her arms as well. “The hat comes with. There’s nothing to be done about it” and she vanished like quicksilver into her peeling little caravan.
Back in the States, Zoe tucked the wings in her wardrobe and wondered what on earth she had been thinking, but she found herself oddly drawn to the hat. Holding it in her lap one day, she felt it wiggle slightly and out leapt a startled rabbit! And that was only the beginning. A ferret in her shoe, a butterfly in her brassiere – one day a lovely white barn owl came screeching out of her overcoat. The day she discovered a school of goldfish calmly swimming around her teacup she decided that marrying her Suitable Fiance was completely out of the question. She packed up a trunk and went on the road as the first female professional magician, wearing her handsome pair of French wings as her trademark. Houdini himself was said to have been quite taken with her. Her scandals were legendary, her adventures were numerous and I heard about them all as soon as I was old enough. The hat survived, but alas, the wings did not, and despite my childhood habit of peering intently into its depths, I was never able to conjure anything out of it. I have had to work my magic on canvases instead, and so bring you this portrait of my lovely great, great aunt, working the magic for which she was so famous.
[Zoe and her magical creatures are depicted with handcut vintage images on this 8” x 10” x ¾” stretched gallery canvas and embellished walnut ink-stained Thai lace paper, brass rivets, a real watchface with spinning hand, an ornate brass label holder and wide black grosgrain ribbon.]”

I bet you didn’t know I was that old already when you started following this blog...


Incredibly, but I swear this is true, this following story Winona wrote actually happened, almost word-for-word, to a Jordan in my family (some of my friends here can even attest to this fact). Only, she never put the gramophone in the attic. In fact, she still plays it, on occasion, and so everyone else in the family and neighborhood has learned to conduct small tests at various set hours during the day to check whether or not a dream is unfolding, masquerading as reality. If one finds oneself awake, yet still sees a fish floating by in the air, one marches directly to her front door to log one’s protest.
Such protests have been known to turn into block parties and reunions, which more often than not last several days. Needless to say, no one in the neighborhood eats seafood.

Ok, that last part might not be true. I *have* heard of protests, but I’ve never, ever joined one, so I can't reliably tell you anything about them. And my inability to eat meat actually has more to do with my magic hat. Anyway, the story of Jordan Quinn:


Calypso

"There are sentimental sorts, people who save every love note hastily jotted on a slip of paper, every memory-laden matchbook, and then there are hoarders, who throw nothing away at all, lest a rusty paperclip come in handy someday. Jordan Quinn was neither of these types, to be sure. If she hadn’t used a given item in the past week, into the trash it went. She disliked fussiness, hated clutter and was generally ill-placed in a family of nostalgic memento-savers and tchotchke-fanciers. Depending on one’s point of view, that made her either the worst or the absolute best choice to clear out her grandmother’s estate when the venerable grande dame went to her reward. Spindly with turrets and spires, the old mansion teetered precariously on a sea cliff overlooking wild and gray Maine sea swells, and was packed to the gills with dusty antiques, souvenirs and bits of Victorian arcana. Pushing open the carved, creaking front door, Jordan visibly wilted in the foyer when faced with the enormity of the task ahead of her. “What a load of junk!” she sighed, plucking several oversized umbrellas out of the elephant-footed umbrella stand by the door and pitching them into the outsized Dumpster she had obtained for the occasion. Upon consideration, she tossed the umbrella stand in as well. 
Jordan’s stamina was considerable, but not unlimited, and by the late afternoon she simply had to take a break. She brewed up a pot of tea and wandered into the untouched parlor where a relic of a gramophone caught her eye. “Oh why not?” she thought “It’s quiet as a tomb in here.” Opening the cabinet, she picked up the first (wax!) disk on the stack. “’Calypso’, eh?” she muttered, fumbling with the machinery of the mystifying outdated device. As the first scratchy notes staggered out of the horn, Jordan sank onto an oversized and ornate chaise upholstered in a milk-and-dark chocolate harlequin satin. Before she could venture a single sip of tea, she was fast asleep.
Awoken by the brightness of a full moon thrusting its round face between the dusty velvet drapes, Jordan glanced over at the gramophone only to see two large fish swimming happily out of it along with the music, that was, amazingly, still playing. A large octopus had cuddled up next to her and was enjoying a cup of tea from her teapot, which was now apparently hosting a fiddler crab. Another cephalopod had taken up residence in her hat and a small Argonaut had apparently abandoned its shell in favor of her teacup. Although simply continuing to dream seemed like the best option, Jordan knew that she was not. She jumped up and removed the record and the sea life disappeared as fast as the music. At that moment, Jordan embraced the wisdom of hiring someone more knowledgeable about antiques than she to undertake the cleanup. However, she also wrapped up the gramophone and the records and took them with her lest someone become curious about what “Safari March” or “Hurricane Sonata” might sound like. As far as anyone knows, they have been sitting in her attic collecting dust ever since.
This original artwork and story are copyright Ramona Szczerba 2010.”

Between my hat and that gramophone, a lot of strange little animals began wandering around, and when that happens, new breeds of scientists can be expected to follow, desiring their study. Miss Elsinore Mittmutter, ahead of her time, prepared for just such an eventuality, becoming the world's first taxidermist, and funding her efforts with a little shop where the specimens could be housed as they awaited their study...


Curiosity Shoppe

“Sometimes there are catchwords in families, mysterious little monikers that get passed down through the generations until nobody remembers from whence they came. By the time one is old enough to realize that calling a salad fork a bitkibble is not universal, there is no one to ask why it got called that in the first place. For my grandmother, it was “vorpal”, which is to say, an incomprehensibly odd individual. “Eh, what a vorpal that one is!” she’d chuckle. Since my grandmother’s speech was peppered with Yiddish despite the fact that she did not have a Jewish bone in her body, I chalked it up to that and almost didn’t inquire, but since her breakfast dessert (coffee and pound cake) always put her in a chatty mood, inquire I did. “Oh that was that crazy Beatrice and her lady friend”, she said, waving her fork around. This was getting better.
When the 17 year old Miss Beatrice von Vorpal got off a ship in New York City in 1850, the plan was for her to be someone’s governess. Apparently, Beatrice had other ideas. Fascinated by natural history and science, she lasted only 2 years in her post before insinuating herself in low level positions in the Acquisitions departments of a series of museums. While her enthusiasm for macabre pickled medical specimens and insect collections raised a few eyebrows, no one could deny that she had a flair for spotting the unusual. Upon making her way out west in search of a promotion, she made the acquaintance of a certain Miss Elsinore Mittmutter, widely held to be the founder of modern taxidermy. The two became fast friends, and as many would whisper, quite a bit more. As Miss Mittmutter was a woman of means, they began to travel, procuring all manner of oddities and antiquities from the ossuaries of Bohemia to the bazaars of Burma, shipping them all to their home base in a creaking Victorian mansion in my hometown. When the house began to burst its seams, the ladies decided to open a shop (or who knows? Maybe they needed a tax write off) and Von Vorpal’s Curiosity Shoppe was born. “Oh, it scared the bejeezus out of us kids”, my grandmother remembered. “Crazy stuffed dead things, scary stuff in jars, bugs”(she gave a little shudder) “you would have loved it,” she said, with an affectionate twinkle in my direction. “She had some interesting items too – genie bottles, coral and shells, daggers, magic spells – but of course we only paid attention to the nasties”. She sliced off another slice of cake. “Oh and that Beatrice, she was fierce, too. She was already an old lady when I was kid and she wore old fashioned dresses and these wacky hats with antlers and real birds on them – oh my!” My grandmother laughed so hard she inhaled some cake crumbs and had a coughing fit. Dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief, she continued, “But they say she was a real beauty when she was young, the both of them. Elsinore, too. But what fella wants a girl who likes dead things?” She gave me a pointed look. “So don’t be a vorpal, my little cupcake. You’re too pretty for that.” And she toddled off for her nap before I could find out whatever became of Beatrice and Elsinore, or point out that girls who like dead things might not want a fella, exactly.

This 8” x 10” x 3/4” original collage depicting Beatrice von Vorpal, Purveyor of Curiosities, has been constructed on a handpainted stretched canvas of painstakingly handcut vintage images and black handmade art paper and is accented by stamped brass corners, brass rivets, silk trim and small crystals.”

And finally, where there are saved dead things and unexplained trinkets, there is magic:


Lydia and Her Lizard

“It can be immediately apparent that some men are going to be nothing but trouble, and if Lydia Esperanza were to be completely honest, she knew Jimmy Varanus was going to be one of them from the very start. But his dark hair was so glossy, his glittering black eyes so piercing, his voice so smooth it was almost a hiss – she found herself smitten despite her best judgment. Of course, Jimmy then wasted no time in slithering into every corner of her life, insinuating himself so firmly that dislodging him would be massively inconvenient if not downright destructive. Luckily, Lydia’s sister, Lena was not fooled for a moment and being unambiguously lesbian, was utterly immune to Jimmy’s dubious charms. She pressed a lavender powder neatly folded into a packet of waxed paper into Lydia’s palm. “Just in case, hon. You never know. I tucked the instructions into your tobacco box,” Lena whispered.
Lydia probably could have put up with the missing cash, drunken late nights and flagrant cheating, at least for a while, but when Jimmy’s words became viciously hurtful, she knew it was only a matter of time before she began accidentally walking into doors and falling down flights of stairs. She began collecting Jimmy’s cigarette butts, a few strands of his hair from the sink, a single dark eyelash from his sleeping cheek, and on a night so foggy it seemed a cloud had swallowed her house, she tapped a few drops of quinine and the mysterious powder (now green!) into Jimmy’s whiskey bottle and topped it off with some malt liquor. She pretended to be asleep as he drained most of it and instantly passed out cold. Mixing the items she collected into her pipe along with some tobacco, she lit the mixture and smoked slowly while she recited the words passed from sister to sister for generations for just such unfortunate situations. Lydia woke up with a jolt, a rude ray of sunlight smacking her right in the face and glanced over at the sofa.
On a stack of oriental cushions, an enormous black monitor lizard blinked its black glittering eyes at her. “Jimmy?” she whispered and the squamate critter flicked its forked tongue at her a few times. “Well I guess that’s that!” Lydia said, emptying the bottle of whisky down the drain. It turns out that Jimmy made a much better pet than he did a lover. He was quite affectionate, as giant lizards go, as well as protective – it takes a reptile to know one and he could sense a cad before he hit the front stoop.
This 4” x 6” x 3/4” original collage depicting Lydia Esperanza and the much improved Jimmy Varanus is constructed on a hand painted stretched gallery canvas with vintage images and is accented by black Dresden trim, brown satin ribbon and a brass lizard with a silver finish at the top. Lydia’s corset is adorned with silk trim and taupe crystals.”

Original works, such as this one:

Mattie and her Glass Case

and this one:

Teacup Travelers

detail:


can be purchased at her Etsy Shop, and prints of those works can be purchased at Red Bubble.


Alice and the Caterpillar

Last, but not least, you can buy me this time-traveler’s T shirt here:

Chrononaut

along with various mouse pads, mugs, tote bags, and T shirts for yourself-- or for me, of course (I like surprises, too). Go forth! This is a treasure trove of artwork and stories for you to dig into this weekend!

You Are Not Falling, You Are Floating

I really fell in love with this piece by David Hochbaum and its title “You Are Not Falling, Your Are Floating,” and have been following his work ever since I discovered it. The good news I bring to you here is that he is set to have an entire show developed under that title, bringing together a series of images expressing that sensation. And what could be better? The show will be at the Corey Helford Gallery, in Culver City, CA, starting February 13, 2010.









Hochbaum is a cofounder of Goldmine Shithouse, which is a collaborative artistic effort. Several artists work on the pieces together, with no one person’s “work” being discernible from that of the others in the completed piece. On the website for that studio, I found a perfect sentence describing David’s development as an artist:
“In his early youth, being unpopular with the girls as well as the boys, David spent most of his time entertaining himself illustrating his imaginary landscapes, surreal, and full of monsters and demons and fantastic creatures inspired from his parent's books of Hieronymus Bosch and Salvador Dali”--Source.


Haruspex
(Note that all the images used in this post are his, not from Goldmine Shithouse)

David’s style of art is one that refuses any limitations, one that develops itself in order to make the best use of what’s at hand, one that forces the world to mold to the image that began in his head. Though he uses a base image of a photo, he doesn’t allow the limitations of that particular medium to dictate the terms of the finished product. So, for example, when his model refuses to allow him to shoot her with an arrow, he finds a way to add it later:



He begins with his sketch, then searches for a model that he can photograph in the proper pose and builds as elaborate a photo set as possible.The photo shoot might turn into a show itself, a narrative unfolding spontaneously that adds something unexpected to the final chosen shot.

So first, he pulls whatever he can from the world in all its ages and varied mythological beliefs to create the photo’s negative, then he continues to experiment with the negative itself in the darkroom, mixing various techniques and sometimes scratching the surface of the negative itself to produce aging effects. Afterwards, he mounts the photo to wood and begins to add to it with oil, acrylic, pencil, ink, the printed word, screen-printing techniques, and varnishes.
He can add his crowded city with a ship parked on top of it in the background by building a model and mounting a photo of it in the proper place, adding another series of messy-hands steps you don’t realize were there when you look at the canvas:






And he ends up with a world like this, with a fabulous 18th century hairpiece, complete with a fully-rigged ship (they really did wear their hair like this then! See examples here), on a blithely naked woman (though it’s certainly more difficult to be *blithely* naked when trying to balance such a hair-piece) who appears to be collecting kindling in the middle of the ocean:



“Transference”

Indeed, his women seem to collect kindling in the oddest of places...


“Three”


Time to Leave

Then comes the frame, which he also makes himself, using found materials--a mix of found materials, of course.


Today



Water


On his webpage, his new show is described in terms that make me want to move immediately to Culver city:

“You Are Not Falling, You Are Floating” is an immersion into the surreal state of consciousness between being awake and asleep and the secrets about ourselves, which are revealed in our dreams. Hochbaum explains, “In dreams, all the secrets are revealed, truths are unveiled, not just the things which we mask in order to present ourselves as functioning, moral human beings amongst each other, but the building blocks which shape our character and desires. We gather these components of dreams from each other. It is a collaboration of human interaction. Our dreams are our collective voices, the voice of the universe.”

Historically, angels and demons have symbolized fears, passions, truths and desires in dreams. However, in his new collection of works, Hochbaum uses black dots hovering like satellites or symbiotic companions as well as handwritten text to represent these secrets of the subconscious. Through a large-scale series of fl oating, tumbling and cascading figures and sculptural works of towers, birds and spheres, “You Are Not Falling, You Are Floating” captures this alternate reality. Hochbaum’s photo constructions take a more raw direction, combining untouched photo imagery with painted narratives.”

Juxtapose Magazine offers some much larger-sized versions of the images in this post, which are that much more of a pleasure to see: I recommend following the link...


Some sneak peeks from his studio, given at his blog:

Dreams of Hungry Ghosts

Following what appears to be this week's theme of Max Ernst and collage...



"Lost at Sea"


"Bird Woman"



In a 2006 interview with Robert Ayers for the Nancy Hoffman Gallery, which represents her, Colette Calascione was asked:
So how do you actually make a painting like Persephone? Her answer is rather surprising, and reminds me that there are a million ways to create, and it's always up to us to explore and discover a way that opens the path for us:

"The first stage is the drawing, getting the drawing together. That’s always my favorite part, that’s the best. I’m actually not that good at drawing—I trace everything, with no shame. So I generally start with everything on tracing paper. Then I do lots of Xeroxing and enlarging. And then things happen, changes happen, and I get to play around with things. Everything comes together like a collage. Persephone was from a photograph—I love those old erotic photographs—and I had the mask, so it just worked out that way.

Then I draw everything on a white panel with a watercolor pencil. I’ll do that until I get the drawing how I like it. Then I’ll do the various layers. It’s mostly for the flesh that I’ll do all of this, because I have so much flesh in my painting! Over the drawing, I do a coat of Caput Mortem—which is an old-time technique, an earth red—and over that I’ll put three layers of white and a layer of green which neutralizes the red. All that creates an optical gray, a grisaille. Then the color starts happening and that’s the tortuous stuff. That’s the hard part...Because I’m so particular. It has to be perfect. The color has to set a mood, and be just right. I’ll redo a color 10 times sometimes until I get it right."


"Persephone"


--In a different version of Adam and Eve, a much older one, in fact, it is the man, ___, who tricks (willfully) the woman, Persephone, into partaking of forbidden foods, in this case, a pomegranate, though it's interesting to note here that there's a lot of scholarship suggesting that the pomegranate was also the actual forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. For the six little seed she absent-mindedly--unaware of the consequences-- nibbles on during the first moments of her captivity, Persephone must from here unto forever spend 6 months out of every year in the Underworld with her captor. And her mother, mourning this, sends the world into winter.

Here, Persephone's mask, a bird swooping downwards, is all she wears, and she seems completely casual, indeed almost bored in her nakedness, as if what had once been terrifying--her abduction to and rape in the underworld--is now just another bit of routine, you know, fall and winter follow spring and summer and then it's back to that constant orgy for 6 months. It's not a bad life, just repetitive. There's no pomegranate here, no symbol of lost innocence, no recollection of lost innocence.




DREAM OF THE HUNGRY GHOST

"That one [Dream of a Hungry Ghost] is my favorite painting. It's based on my favorite Max Ernst collage. I just the loved the image. I had it hanging on my wall for years. That's me in the painting looking like Mary Poppins. Recently I've been painting me a lot. The sculpture on the table is a Picasso drawing. Then look at the wallpaper. The roses are insane. There are five hundred roses in there, and I painted each one in detail, and they are so thick that there are bumps on the surface of the paint. You can feel them. I worked on it for two years. I think it probably looked finished after a year, but I had it here on my studio wall, and though I'd be working on something else, there’d always be some little thing I could do to make it look more illuminated. I really like that, to keep a painting around and I’ll think, "Maybe I could just add a little highlight here," and then it gets this really nice polished look."


(Max Ernst, from "Une Semaine de Bonte")

In 1934, Max Ernst put together a book of collages called Une Semaine de Bonta, ou, Les Sept Elements Cardinaux (A Week of Kindness, or, the Seven Deadly Elements), which I have already written about here, and the entirety of which is available here. Each day of the week envisions one of the seven deadly elements-- -- in several collaged images. "On Tuesday, large or small dragons (sometimes bats or serpents) are almost universally present… Stern, proper-looking women sprout giant sets of wings, serpents appear in the drawing-room and bed-chamber…" Tuesday is La Cour du Dragon, The Dragon's Heart, whose element is fire. Here you have the man with his dragon's wings, passionately embraced, clutched into a kiss, in a Victorian drawing room. Calascione's version adds color, and she paints it as a whole piece, but it still keeps an oddly collaged feel, perhaps because of the incongruence of the images. She also adds angels wings into the petticoats of the woman's dress, strengthening the incongruence and deepening the story: is this an angel, pulling a demon into an embrace? Because she is very clearly in the lead. Calascione also adds the element of fire. The colored squares of the floor hollow out, adding another dimension to the room, and flames leap up from the depths in a circle around them. But they do not touch the couple. From above a key is offered, by a hand from yet another dimension, that enters through a wall. Here is a moment of union, a moment of opportunity. Instead of seeing it as the woman falling into the clutches of a demon (which is still a possibility, once the moment ends, as the flames and the easy access from below remind us), we can see here a demon gaining the key to heaven. It is not clear whether he will accept, but at the moment, anything is possible. That's just my opinion. But in the interview with Robert Ayers, Calascione expressed her hope that viewers would come up with their own interpretations of the images, as she was offering none.


Coincidental Gathering




Here's a mermaid against the background of Hokusai's giant wave, from the Mt. Fuji wood-block series of the Edo Period. I like the effect of lush painting against wood-block style. Note that she's turned some of the ocean spray into bubbles, thus mixing the foreground with the background.




Hokusai's Great Wave.



I first discovered her art here, on ArtOdyssey's blog.



Rapunzil

Mitobiografia

Andrea Barberini is an artist residing in Italy, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. After discovering the collage book of Max Ernst, Une Semaine du Bonte, he set out to create a book of his own using a similar collage style. He created the background and characters for his tale from images he found in the Encyclopedia of Diderot and D'Alambert from the XVIII century--the first encyclopedia in history. From there, he cut and pasted illustrations "according to my mood and fancy," using anatomy books, history books, and anything else he could find. After several years, he decided that the book should have a text, and he created this fictional "autobiography" with its very surreal flavor. I discovered the book when he made a video of it on YouTube, under the screen name "shivabel." On his page, he has also made available generous selections from several artistic texts, such as the Ernst collage book and also the Codex Seraphinianus (Luigi Serafini), and the Parallel Botany (leo Lionni), setting them to music with great sensitivity. His YouTube Page is thus a great resource.

His Mitobiografia, followed by a translation of the text and some of its images, is here:



"The Mitobiografia is totally imaginary, so please consider every reference to facts or persons, first and foremost my person, as merely casual or arbitrary.

1- In the beginning was the fortuitous meeting, in front of a respectably bourgeois house, between a slime of liquid fire and a naked snail. Never far away was the archetypal sacrifice of the young supplicant.

[The liquid fire and naked snail are sexual symbols, their meeting leading to a birth. This is the recurring cycle of life: birth and sacrifice...]



"In Front of a Respectably Bourgeois House..."

2- The scream of the sacrificed froze the world for the eternity of a moment.

3- Little by little, I felt myself swelling and expanding past what seemed possible, while confused yet tangible presences insufflated me with the breath of life.

4- The shapeless being that I had become was then cheerfully tortured by pitilessly well-intentioned persons; they carefully and attentively used obscure and secret devices about which only they were knowledgeable.


"Pitilessly Well-Intentioned Persons..."

5-My seraphic mother was blissfully unaware of the tragedy of my childhood.


"My Seraphic Mother..."

6- Every morning, at daybreak, my severed head watched its executioner break my body to pieces in a constant, repeated nightmare.

7- The environment in which I grew up came out very soon as a place of perdition, an ambiguous den for degenerates where, behind a mask of respectability, the most vile and vicious persons arranged to meet.

8-One day, i took advantage of the inattention of a guardian and i ran away into the wild, far away from these horrible places.

9-I was welcomed among wild and thoughtful persons. They offered to me a nourishing meal and a contagious joy. For the first time in my life I felt I was happy.

10-But I was discovered and, sadly, I was forced to return to my house. There, I took advantage of the frequent quarrels of my parents to devote myself to obscure trades which allowed me to explore my true nature.

11-Irresponsible and presumptuous friends continually harassed me during the hours i dedicated to study, urging me to think more in line with what would help me attain a respectable job.

12-Anxious and naive, i warmed myself at the flame of Truth burning my fingers and, feigning indifference, i tried to hear the pressing questions of the Cosmic Mother. But, not a word from the silent oracle, nothing but incomprehensible noises.


"At the Flame of Truth"

13-Behind a mask of shadows, I wildly watched the obscene miracle of the temptation.



14-My anguish prevented me from showing to all people the innocence of my crime. Shy and childish, i hid myself in the most secluded places from the faintest hint of another's presence.

15-In these unhealthy paradises, the heavenly wine of ecstasy was ceaselessly distilled, and I drank of it to inebriation, a blissful victim.

16-But as soon as I closed my eyes I could clearly hear the words full of poison pronounced by a female voice. A sad and cruel lament. My head burned.


"My Head Burned"

17-Recovered from the fever, I opened my eyes and I was dazzled by Beauty. Mad with joy, I stripped myself of all decency, and crazy for passion, I was able to take Her away from Her prostrated parents.

18-She was my prisoner, and I showed Her pale and silent face to the few privileged only, stingily.

19-Restless, every day I questioned the mute simulacrum, the black mirror of my desire. And She questioned me.

20-I was satisfied even if I only observed her, happy and playful, in my study.

21- With time, i can only ascribe to a divine gesture the awakening of a new sensuality, more sweet, more delicate, which filled my heart with secret joys. I returned to life.

22-At last, we decided to set off to a long journey. But first we consulted the strange animal of a gipsy child. After hearing the response, we abandoned the last pretense, and we run, full of fear and desire, to the open sea.

23-The phantom of paternity was already waiting in my future's dreams..."



THE END



Recently, his sister visited some caves in Italy and took many magical photos, showing a natural landscape that could easily have influenced Max Ernst's famous "frottage" style, most clearly seen in "Europe After the Rain," and "The Eye of Silence." The video of those photos, set to music by Diamanda Galas, is here:



Max Ernst, "The Eye of Silence":