Red Stamps

Red Stamps
Here are two grid collages using lots of old letters, magazine ads, photos, etc.
The above is 18x12 on paper.


A Woman of Letters
This one is done on a 20x18 wood panel using lots of old letters, stamps and tags. The whole time I was making it, I was thinking of a title and kept coming back to "A Woman of Letters", thinking of Emily Dickinson. But when I came across this photo of the writer, Tillie Olson, I knew it was what I was after. The photo is an 8x10 transfer, the largest I've ever used in a piece.

Found this poem by Dorothy Parker; it reminds me of estate sale-ing and my collections of olden things with which I make my collages.

Bric-a-Brac
Little things that no one needs-
Little things to joke about-
Little landscapes, done in beads.
Little morals, woven out.
Little wreaths of gilded grass,
Little brigs of whittled oak
Bottled painfully in glass:
These are made by lonely folk.

Lonley folk have lines of days
Long and faltering and thin;
Therefore- little wax bouquets,
Prayers cut upon a pin,
Little maps of pinkish lands,
Little charts of curly seas,
Little plats of linen strands,
Little verses, such as these.

I take this poem, as I do much of Parker's writing as mostly " tongue in cheek"; she includes even her own poetry verses as "Little things to joke about". But there is also a painful feeling of rejection and the busy work of melancholy woven into it. (Making art is often isolating and lonley work!) But I think she's talking more about how "other's" sometimes percieve the small creative offerings that artists make, their "odd' collections, their "silly" attention to the details of the ordinary. Those with nothing better to do. ( I've actually been told by visitors to my studio that I have way too much time on my hands!).
But I think Parker may also be talking about the vulnerabilities and doubts artists sometimes have about themselves.

I like the quote from the Dada artist Dorothea Tanning:
"Many people find joy in actually doing something the pragmatists would call useless."

Amen to that!