Trojan Horse 2007

Metaphorically a "Trojan Horse" has come to mean any trick or stratagem that causes a target to allow a foe into a securely protected bastion or space. A malicious computer program which tricks users into willingly running it is called a "Trojan horse".  Wikipedia

For the last two weeks I've been spending quite a bit of time with the Geek Squad at Best Buy. For over two weeks I've had to keep returning to the store with my (heavy)computer in my arms, stand in line, and then explain the problem, which had not been resolved by previous visits and repairs, to whichever "Geek' was behind the counter.  But that was nothing compared to the anxiety I began to feel at the possibility of their not being able to fix my computer--AKA my lifeblood.  What if they couldn't fix it?  Would I need to buy a new computer?  If so, should I get a MAC instead of a PC?  Would all of my data transfer?  What about Photoshop-I only have it for PC's and the new format involves a monthly fee to download it from the cloud.  Expensive, unknown.  And on and on and on, the broken record of my anxiety starting to spin out of control.  Finally fixed, the problem turned out to be a virus, which had arrived as a download in the belly of something else--a "Trojan Horse".

A month ago, I was on the phone for 4 1/2 hours with a man from India trying to figure out why we couldn't stream Netflix to our TV.  We did many different things, none of which seemed to work.  At one point, he informed me that I would have to pay his company $120 in order to get my problem solved.  I paid the money, and only as the MasterCard bill came through did I realize that the company I thought I had been talking to wasn't this man's company at all, but one that sounded and looked just like it.  At the very bottom of the Internet page that I had gotten the contact number from, in tiny print, was a disclaimer, saying basically, we aren't who you think we might be. After I'd hung up, exhausted and depressed,  I sat on the couch, in front of our non-streaming Netflix TV, and cried. Of course, it was another Trojan Horse, pleased with just how far into the protected space of my psyche and my MasterCard it had gotten.

SS Courage 1998

When my eldest daughter was a few weeks old, I took her on our first shopping trip to the Safeway Grocery store in Gallup, New Mexico. I had placed her in a baby carrier in the cart and was at the dairy case, looking over the different yogurts. A large, vaguely sinister man in worn overalls and scruffy facial hair came up to us.  My alarm bells started ring off and  I pictured throwing myself over the baby so he couldn't grab her.  He stopped, looked at Ramey for a few moments with warmth and affection in his eyes and then, glancing up at me said,  "Welcome to the parent club". Needless to say, no baby was snatched,

It's a club I've never, ever regretted joining.  It's taught me about compassion, about deep love and real concern.  It's helped me become more connected to the world around me, and it's made me laugh and cry and have every emotion in between. It's made me be the best person I can be and its turned me into an true adult,.  Lastly, it's helped me become a mother to my mother as her memory fades and she struggles to keep living on her own.  I call her daily and nag and scold her and do all the things a mother does when she is concerned about a worrisome child. I don't think I could be doing this today if I hadn't joined that incredible club 27 years ago.
  

Snake 2014(El Dorado)

Although my mother has serious problems with her memory, at 85, she's a rockin' lady. A few days ago Mom and I decided to go for a walk with the dogs.  We started out, my dog running loose and Mom's dog, Abbey, on a leash with me at one end and Abbey at the other.  My mother lives on the outskirts of Santa Fe in a community called El Dorado.  The homes are spaced on one acre lots, and there is open space between the houses, with a well worn trail trail running through it.  The weather was fairly mild, but a little windy, it being spring in New Mexico. Unused to the high desert, my dog was constantly having to stop his forward motion to pull cactus spines out of his paws.  We'd been out for about 45 minutes, and had just reached the asphalt road, looping back to her house, when we spotted a snake on the tarmac.  He looked alive, and there was no evidence of "smush", which usually lets me know it's road kill.  Mom and I advanced cautiously, the dogs completely unaware of the snake. However, it didn't move, and, since I noticed a lack of a rattle on it's tail, I  felt comfortable getting close.  Meanwhile, Mom rustled around on the side of the road and found a stick which she then proceeded to (lightly) touch the snake with.  No reaction, so we knew it was dead.  My camera was back at her house, and Mom, knowing that I wanted to photograph the snake, urged me to go on ahead without her.  I took off with both dogs, walking rapidly, thinking the house was close, but in fact, it was another mile.  By the time I located my camera and checked my settings, Mom was back at the house, eager to go back with me to photograph the beautiful snake we had both found.

Snake Rider(unfinished)2014

A few weeks ago The Photographer's Gallery in London asked if they coud represent my work  http://www.thephotographersgallery.org.uk.  Last week they requested any kind of video that would introduce people in the UK to me and my work, so my husband and I shot this video today.  I don't know how to edit video, but I could show Bob what buttons to push on my camera, and I did have an idea of something that might work if we shot it all in one take(It ended up taking two takes because we shot the first one upside down).  This is what we made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5dqxGVI4sA&feature=youtu.be

Bucking Bronco 2006

I will sometimes watch, on TV, professional bareback bronc riding(as opposed to saddle bronc riding).  The riders are all young, male, and seem to be named "Cody" or "Jarrod".  They flop around on the backs of  horses with names like "Chuckolater" and "Smack Down" who do their best to dislodge these young men.  If the cowboys are lucky and stay on for the required eight seconds, they will be eligible to win large pots of money depending on how well they ride their broncs.  One cowboy, when asked what it was like to ride a bareback bronc said, "It's like putting your hand in a vice, attaching it to a train, and then driving it off a cliff".

My “Bucking Bronco” is about risk and the (often) disastrous results of that risk.  The cowboy’s rock constructed body means that when he does go off, he will be guaranteed a hard and brittle landing(on the rather large boulder immediately behind him).  The  horse, with the back half of his body portraying a missile range, gives us clues as to just how dangerous he really is.  A time lapse view lets us see our cowboy’s head snap back, with the last head, open mouthed, showing us just how frightened he really is as he realizes he is most probably going off.   And of course, the wheelchair symbol making up the front half of the horse clues us in as to where this rider will eventually end up.

Gluing 2014

Counter clockwise from left to right:
1.  Image, which is finished, and has been adjusted and changed and fine tuned until it is as close to perfect as I can get.  It's all temporarily adhered onto the painted surface with yellow sticky stuff so that I can look at it for a long long time before I glue it.   This is part seeing how it wears over time and part procrastination.

2.  Scissors:  Good ones, in this case Dahle http://www.amazon.com/DAHLE-Super-Shears-All-around/dp/B001V21CQ2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397427200&sr=8-1&keywords=dahle+scissors  (shouldn't I be getting a kickback from Dahle on this?).  I have about twenty pair of scissors.  The Dahles are pretty much the only ones I use, and I've had them for at least 25 years.  I use my other scissors if I'm doing coarse cutting of plastic or paper that I don't care about.  The scissors, at this stage, are to trim and refine as I glue.  I always keep the bits and pieces of what I cut off in case I've cut off too much and need to correct.

3.  A fine brush to paint in problem areas in the painted surface or the photo that I see after I've glued everything down.

4.  A white pencil to mark the areas of the image that need to be trimmed.

5.  A magnifying glass to make sure my glue edges are good.  Older eyes(even with glasses) aren't serving me as well as they used to.

6.  Foam brushes to coat the backs of the paper that I will be adhering.  Different sizes brushes for the different sizes of paper that will lay down.  I always want to make sure I go over the edges of the paper I'm about to glue, but I also don't want to waste the adhesive.  Bowl of water so that I can drop the not being used foam brushes in so that the adhesive won't dry.

7.  Spray bottle of water to spray the front surface of thinner papers like dictionary pages, tissue, or newsprint so that they won't curl into a nasty ball when I put the adhesive on the back.

8.  Little ball of yellow sticky stuff that I use to adhere the paper onto the panel temporarily and which I also use to register where the paper will go on the panel just before I drop it down.

9.  Polymer medium, in this case Dick Blick, but all the brands work pretty well.  I buy it by the gallon and it lasts about two years.

What I'm not showing is the back knobber which I use to try and push out the large, uncomfortable  knots  that I get in my back from standing and maneuvering badly behaved pieces of paper.  I'm also not showing the EKG display which records the wild and erratic rhythms of my heart as I realize that I have glued something at the wrong angle, backwards or upside down, or when, as I smooth the paper down with a discarded credit card(not shown), all of the ink pulls up, so that I'm left with a blobbed smear of paper.  And lastly, I'm not showing xrays of my locked jaw and frozen neck, concretized from my standing rigidly for hours at a time trying to force all those big and little pieces of paper to bend to my will.

Studio 2014

Looking to North wall:  stacked images with blank paintings below

Looking to East Wall:  work table with piled photos and papers

Looking to South Wall: stacked paintings and work table covered with piled photos and papers

Looking to West Wall:  stacked paintings on both walls and end, tables covered with photos and papers

I have been working fairly steadily since September of last year(2013)in preparation for two upcoming shows; one in June in Santa Fe at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art  http://www.zanebennettgallery.com/  and the other in September in Santa Monica at Craig Krull Gallery http://www.craigkrullgallery.com/ . It's been an interesting ride.  I feel that I'm making some of the best work I've ever made, but it's time to get off the horse and clean up.

My studio has become waist deep in bits of paper, photographs, paint, books, and painted panels.  Unfinished images are stacked two and three deep on my walls(The unfinished pieces consist of  collaged images on top of painted panels, but only adhered with little bits of sticky stuff).    The layers of paper/photographs on my work tables have become quite dense as the months have rolled by.  It seems chaotic, but it's not.  As I work, I can remember where a certain animal head or a scrap of a photo with a particular value is, no matter how many layers down I have to go, no matter how long ago I cut up a particular photograph.  Even better, while looking to find something, I might happen on a scrap of paper that leads me to start a new collage.  It's a rich and fertile room if you happen to be collage artist.

When I first started out as a young artist in graduate school, I would have small bits of time when I would be able to really concentrate on what I was doing, maybe ten or fifteen minutes once or, if I was lucky, twice in a work session.  Now I can go for several hours with that same concentration(my limit now is fatigue--I can't go for more than about four hours).*  I've also changed--hugely--in that I don't get as attached to an image, and when it doesn't work, no matter the time invested, I'm able to let go fairly easily.  Younger Holly would have stumbled into the house in a sad comma shape, or have cried,  or despaired, or most probably, done all three.  Now,  I'm just deeply happy to be in my studio every afternoon, following my hands and my intuition, painting, cutting and sticking, truly pleased to be able to make images that I love.

*However, I often have a difficult time remembering why I've gone from one room to the next.