New work: "Denier"
You know that feeling when you take the last step on the stairs, and it turns out there is no step and your foot comes down extra hard? That unexpected jolt, tinged with chagrin? Now imagine the missing step was a friendship you thought you could rely on: how much worse would that feel?
I’d felt that way about My Fellow Americans in general, and certain people in particular, over the past three years. Even my past seems to have been overwritten by these… interesting times in which we live.
Of course, I’ve picked up the fragments of this trust and rebuilt what I could, in a kintsugi kind of way. I can’t live with unrelenting suspicion of everyone I meet for the rest of my life. I wonder if all of us are in denial, but for very different reasons. I consider this new collage, “Denier,” a warning to myself as well as others.
Speaking of broken trust, one of my previous works has been accepted to the upcoming exhibit “Fracture” at the Kirkland Arts Center. I appreciate that I’m not the only person thinking about cracks in what we used to think was stable.
Friendship: a work-in-progress
Studio day…. trying something a little different with this collage.
I deliberately misaligned the collage pieces again, but this time I’m “joining” the pieces kintsugi-style. Just using gold paint, though, with some guidance from my favorite stencils.
The idea of repairing a broken vessel with lacquered gold has always appealed to me; it’s just now that it means more when I look at my friendships through that lens.
Some relationships are worth saving, even if they’re a little banged up. They might even mean more to you after you’ve put in the work to repair them. Others just look sturdy until they’re tested. Can’t wait to see what else this collage reveals to me.
Collage in progress: the little prince
You know about The Little Prince, right? (Not that one. This one.)
Credit: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (U.S. public domain, copyrighted in France until 2045)
I'm working on a collage homage to the little prince, so to speak. This summer, I noticed NASA celebrated the 45th anniversary of the first moon landing by uploading photos from all the missions to Flickr. I'm now remixing a few of those images with my family photos, on watercolor paper.
The book's watercolor illustrations pulled me into that other universe so long ago I don't even remember the first time I saw them. But even as a kid, I understood the themes of alienation and connection perfectly. Not that I could have told you this back then, but I knew alienation isn't just loneliness, or even being alone by choice.
Museum of the Little Prince, Hakone, Japan. Credit: arieM1FLERéunion/ Wikimedia Commons
It's also about the parallel experience of not quite living in the same reality as the person next to you. Even when the other person is your friend, that connection is always tenuous and changing. You might remember I also explored those ideas in my most recently completed piece. So as I continue to work on the Great Mystery Project, I find that head space melancholy but also full of potential and anticipation. More to come.
(And if you haven't read The Little Prince, what are you waiting for? It's less than 100 pages. I know -- I've read it in both French and English.)