Wine and Glue

All else confusion #art #collage #artjournals #muybridge #Tennyson #suffragettes

A photo posted by @ellypdq on Nov 11, 2014 at 6:42pm PST

We can sense the universe's margins #collage #art #artjournals

A photo posted by @ellypdq on Nov 11, 2014 at 5:37pm PST

There was wine. And then there were two arts.

The top one has a line taken from an Alfred Tennyson poem, The Princess. It is tl;dr, yo. The poem is about higher education for women. The image is photos of an academic honors society, from a 1957 high school yearbook.

Ladymusings #246

It is not my job to make you feel better about being a dude.

Dudevertising

Drinking Diet Coke will make your dick fall off. TRUFAX. So Coke created macho Coke Zero for manly men. And now they're advertising it with heavily gendered crap like this.

So. Gross. I can't even envision a scenario wherein I would willingly share my pop with bros or grillmasters.

International Women's Day

So. Tomorrow is International Women's Day. One whole Day! Just for us ladypeople! Google is, of course, celebrating with a Google doodle. And of course, some dude was interviewed about its creation. He says, and I fucking quote: "International Women’s Day is a really hard topic. How do you [summarize] what women represent in a graphic?"

Jesus wept.

Texas is celebrating by further restricting access to abortion. Why? Because they care. Mm-hm. It seems to me that if they actually gave one single solitary fuck about women's health and safety, they would accept the fact that pregnancy is far more dangerous to women than abortion. But they don't, so they won't.

We rise up

We rise up tangled
with the night.
Down shadowy lanes,
across Strange distances
We have come
ready for the fight.

Vessels: 3 x 9

Vessels: 3 by 9 (with detail)
mixed media on paper

This is the latest installment in the Vessels series. It's a combination of Pitt pen, Koh-I-Noor watercolor pencils, Neocolors II water-souluble wax crayons, and collage on yummy Cartiere Magnani paper. I'm much happier with this piece than #17--not so much because I think the final image is all that much better, but because the process of getting to the end result was more satisfying.

I'm especially happy with the leaves. I usually don't enjoy the process of cross-hatching. It's a bloody pain in my behindermost parts to get the sort of result I want. It's a little difficult to tell, even from the detail, but there there are layers upon layers upon layers of cross hatching, which gives a velvety depth to the drawing. The paper held up very well to this sort of abuse.

Vessels: Blue Moon Gold Halo

Vessels: Blue Moon Gold Halo
collage

This is another piece in the same series as the Identity Theft pieces. Instead of working in a composition book, these pieces were all done on chip board. My plan is to eventually bind them all into a book. The book's working title is Vessels. That could change, but at this point things are shaping up nicely within that overall theme.

As with most of the glue book pieces I've done, this one is nothing new or profound. It's just a reflection of where my head was at the time. Glue books, for me, are as much stream of consciousness as anything. As you can see, I've been thinking a lot about the dichotomy between the Virgin and the Whore. Girls learn at a very young age that they're either one or the other. However, as any sane woman can tell you, there are no such absolutes.

Sacred Cow
collage




Identity Theft 1 & 2
collage

These are pretty self explanatory. Our break room at work has a table where people leave magazines they've finished with. There are usually several women's magazines Good Housekeeping, Women's Day, etc. I occasionally flip through them. It never fails to depress me.

Tainted Love: A Series of ATCs

1. Baubo Takes Love by the Horns
2. Baubo and Cycladic Head Find Love in a Feather Bed
3. Baubo Cruises the Love Boat
4. Sympathetic Magic 1
5. Sympathetic Magic 2


Technical notes:
One of the art groups I play in decided to do a special Dark Valentine ATC swap. I had some ideas that revolved around Hollywood sex sirens, but they all seemed a bit flat. I was going through a box of photos I'd taken years ago for a project I haven't really gotten to yet: Baubo's Safari. I thought some of them would be perfect for this swap, so I pulled out a few of them and set them on my coffee table to contemplate. I figured that if I looked at them long enough, inspiration would hit. And it did.

I sanded and scratched up the surfaces. For the one 35mm photo, I was able to entirely sand away extraneous bits I didn't want included. Polaroid film isn't as easily manipulated, but I found that if I sanded off the binding tape around the edges, I could remove the film from the emulsion layer. I really like the way these turned out. (If you try this at home, I'd suggest wearing gloves and a face mask and dispose of the emulsion layer very carefully! It contains some pretty toxic chemicals that you don't want to breathe or worse, have your pets chew on or eat.)

The photo layer of a Polaroid is a thin piece of plastic, so it presents a challenge when trying to adhere it to something else. I'd decided to use an old deck of Harly Davidson playing cards as my ATC base. The cards are highly plasticized, and even though I'd sanded them thoroughly, I didn't think I could get a good bond between the card and the film. I decided to use a mechanical fastener--eyelets--instead.

Baubo:
So, who is Baubo and why did I choose her to represent tainted love? Baubo is a goddess of womanly humor and knowledge; of obscene laughter and bawdy jokes; of the belly and the vulva.

Baubo played an important part in the story of Demeter and Persephone. When Demeter--goddess of ripe grain; of fruition and harvest--lost her daughter to Hades, she wandered the earth in deep mourning. Demeter took an oath that the earth would remain barren until Persephone was returned to her. The crops died and the earth turned barren. It was as if ceaseless winter had fallen on the land.

In deep despair, Demeter travels to Eleusis, where she retires from the world. Baubo meets her there and intercedes, telling bawdy jokes and then, the unthinkable: Baubo flashes Demeter. By lifting up her skirts and showing her belly and vulva to Demeter, Baubo shocks Demeter and causes her to laugh. Demeter regains hope and decides to carry on her search for her daughter. In the meantime, she reclaims her duties in making the crops and vegetation grow. Abundance returned to the earth.

Sympathetic Magic:
These two images should be self-explanatory. They are funerary urns from the Bura People of Lake Chad, Niger. They're shaped like huge penises (3-4' tall) and are covered with scarification patterns.

Packing

Packing
collage in composition book

Today's glue book spread started with the lovely pale tealish blue color of the wedding cupcake layout. From there, I searched through my stacks of clippings, looking for similarly colored bits. The idea of a woman's traditional place in the world--from cook and seamstress to interior decorator to maid to fashion plate and wife--became a running theme. The title comes from the historical act of a woman and her dowry being packed up as presents to be opened by her new husband. I thought of all the woman who, throughout history, have embarked on a new life not knowing what was in store for them. What thoughts must have gone through their minds as they packed to leave their parents' homes for the last time?