Friday, October 16, 2015

Lazy: Fall 2015

I have been working for almost a year on building images.  At this point, I have slipped into a stage that is probably very similar to what happens to a heroin addict:  I only want the fun, none of boring stuff.  I have painted the panels http://hollyrobertsonepaintingatatime.blogspot.com/2015_07_01_archive.html which is lots and lots and lots of fun, and exciting.  I have taken and gathered the images/painted paper/photographs (fun), and I have cut out and pieced them together to make stories about things I didn't know existed until I pulled them all together(fun and interesting).  I tack them onto the painted surfaces with poster adhesive, and then I put them up on the wall to look  and then adjust as need be(not as fun but okay).
The images that I have put up are soon covered by other images, so that on my shelves I have images that go three and four deep, all waiting to be adhered(NOT fun).  I forget about the ones I've done as I stack more over them.
The tables are covered with folders with photos/painted paper/and painted panels. As I continue to work they are then covered by more folders and more bits and pieces of paper:  faces, textures, shapes.  Somehow I keep a fairly precise idea of where everything is on the seven tables in my studio:  two tiny cut out horse ears?  No problem, on the shelf under the image of the Twin Selves towards the back(and this from a mind that can't remember why it's taking me from one room to the next).  If I start to clean up and organize things(not fun), instead I just make more collages(fun).  By this time every scrap of paper that I've cut, or printed out has potential, and if I throw it away, what then?  Gone(not fun)!
I'm left with a mountain of work: the careful, precise, and anal job of adhering the images permanently, then coated with a final varnish(NOT NOT fun).  I will end up with a stiff and sore neck and a jaw that doesn't want to open because I have been clenching as I glue. I will photograph the new work, adjust the images in Photoshop(not as un-fun as adhering but not exactly fun), then  send the images to my galleries to see which ones they want to exhibit(sometimes fun, sometimes not).  So, wherever I have put a "not fun" think of that heroin addict dozing off on the dirty mattress on the floor, bills unpaid, leaking roof, and a kitchen stacked full of unwashed dishes.

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Man with TV 1986

TV is central to our lives.  Both my husband and I take our dinners into the living room where we sit, plates in our laps, and watch our favorite programs every evening.  I'm reminded of Bob's Grandparents watching Lawrence Welk every Saturday, only now they are long gone, and we are watching our own versions of the saccharine band leader.  We talk about characters as if they are our friends, analyzing what has been said or done long after the show is over.  When we go out to parties or to have dinner with friends, we discuss our latest favorite shows, among them, Naked and Afraid, a reality show about two strangers of the opposite sex dropped in the wilderness to survive without food, clothes, or water for 21 days, or Transparent, a TV series about a family in Los Angeles whose father comes out as always having thought of him/herself as a woman. We now have cable with it's billion trillion(mostly worthless) channels, Netflix, and now, Amazon Prime, so we have even more access to movies and television series.  Many of the programs we watch are excellent, and it's being said that we are in the Golden Age of TV--series that are allowed to follow complicated and compelling story lines over years, like Breaking Bad or The Sopranos.  But even when we only had four stations and a tiny black and white set with Rabbit ears, we were still TV Junkies.  At least now we can pretend that what we are watching is vital to our development as human beings, and not just pure escapism.