The green-eyed monster
Remember how I said I was trying to make a deadline, and that's why I delayed posting for like two weeks? Here's what I was working on.
The painted-over, resized image of my grandfather is the focal point for a piece I've submitted to a local art exhibit. The Lynnwood Arts Commission asked for "green" artwork, in either/both senses of the word. Environmentally green interested me... but it didn't grab me and smack me upside the head like the 'green-eyed monster.'
And my grandfather's love life has just been begging me to re-imagine it. Three marriages in four decades? There must be something interesting going on there. To the divorce deposition, Robin!
My grandfather rarely said more than two words at a time, the way I remember it. But I now have copies of his divorce files, which tell me a lot more than he ever would have. I copied some of them in a loooong sheet...
... and tore up regular-sized copies to create a cave of sorts, inspired by Michael deMeng's "Cave of Pages" class. For my piece, I wired and glued together cigar boxes for two parts of the story.
I altered a painting of grandpa's house that had a deliberate rip running through it, and dripped a little green onto the rip. Then I positioned grandpa and his jealousy-consumed heart beneath the drip.
In order to age the papers as if they were burnt by the Flames of Jealousy, I did a lot of painting the text and its torn edges. A LOT of painting. Oh my God, I was so sick of painting. But the piece just wouldn't leave me alone until I'd done every last page. You know how it is.
Okay, some of them were more fun than others: The shred above is from a policeman's testimony. He and his partner caught grandpa's ex-wife making out with her boyfriend one night on the steps of the public library.
And finally, I painted the caulk/"rock" of the cave's exterior, to make it more rock-like, to marry it with the divorce paper scroll, and to connect the top with the bottom more strongly.
You know, one of the best parts of being DONE! with this piece is realizing some of the choices I made subconsciously. Like the fact that I used cigar boxes -- recycled, of course, but hey, cigars are made of tobacco leaves... and my grandfather was born, lived and died in tobacco country.
Or the doll legs: I just wanted female legs to peep through the cave door, but after a while I realized that's all I really know about her -- what she allegedly did with those legs, not what she said or thought. There was no testimony from her. But it's interesting to think about what hadn't been said about that relationship.
I find out if my piece was accepted for the exhibit on September first.
You know, one of the best parts of being DONE! with this piece is realizing some of the choices I made subconsciously. Like the fact that I used cigar boxes -- recycled, of course, but hey, cigars are made of tobacco leaves... and my grandfather was born, lived and died in tobacco country.
Or the doll legs: I just wanted female legs to peep through the cave door, but after a while I realized that's all I really know about her -- what she allegedly did with those legs, not what she said or thought. There was no testimony from her. But it's interesting to think about what hadn't been said about that relationship.
I find out if my piece was accepted for the exhibit on September first.
Divorce drama
If you don't know by now, Jon and Kate of "Jon & Kate Plus Eight" appear to be getting that divorce that was so obviously bound to happen, even before he got caught gallivanting with another woman. I'm relieved, because now I won't have to wonder why Mr. Passive Aggressive is staying with Mrs. Contemptuous Control Freak.
On the same day, I got word from the Kentucky Department for Libraries & Archives that I can get my grandfather's complete divorce file. Which is awesome, from a genealogy standpoint.
If it's really complete, maybe it'll even have some info about his first marriage. Two ex-wives with one stone, so to speak. The file I'll be getting was from his divorce from the second wife, and family legend has it that he shot his wife's boyfriend in the butt when he found out about the affair. (Oh, please let that one be true!)
BTW, he also filed for divorce from his third wife, my grandmother -- when he was in his 80s. No, he didn't go through with it; as my father once put it, "Where's he gonna go?" But word of it got into the local paper, and the whole thing embarrassed the hell out of my mom. Well, this is the closest I'm gonna get to gossip from his contemporaries. He died at age 95, back in 1979.
EDIT 6/23/09: The file doesn't necessarily have info about the first marriage, but the researcher at KDLA said there's a deposition. Can't wait to read the evasions and trick questions!
On the same day, I got word from the Kentucky Department for Libraries & Archives that I can get my grandfather's complete divorce file. Which is awesome, from a genealogy standpoint.
If it's really complete, maybe it'll even have some info about his first marriage. Two ex-wives with one stone, so to speak. The file I'll be getting was from his divorce from the second wife, and family legend has it that he shot his wife's boyfriend in the butt when he found out about the affair. (Oh, please let that one be true!)
BTW, he also filed for divorce from his third wife, my grandmother -- when he was in his 80s. No, he didn't go through with it; as my father once put it, "Where's he gonna go?" But word of it got into the local paper, and the whole thing embarrassed the hell out of my mom. Well, this is the closest I'm gonna get to gossip from his contemporaries. He died at age 95, back in 1979.
EDIT 6/23/09: The file doesn't necessarily have info about the first marriage, but the researcher at KDLA said there's a deposition. Can't wait to read the evasions and trick questions!
Completed art, pre-baby
I finally finished the ancestor art piece I'd been working on a couple of months ago. This is my conceptualization of my great-grandfather, who was a Civil War veteran in a US Colored Troops artillery company. He joined, I think, after running away from his owner in Kentucky.
He got out of the war with some respiratory problems. But his main health issues came from being shot several times by a local farmer who refused to pay up for farm work my great-grandfather did for him. I have no picture of him, but I do have that picture of five of his sons, plus one of my great-grandmother. So I composed a face for him using two of the faces that looked least like my great-grandmother.
The first try just looked like crrrrrap, and I was so disappointed with the results I threw it out. (Yes, I know -- I should've just sanded it down and then painted it again or something. But it suhhhhhhcked!) At least I kept it until I figured out why it didn't work.
Oh, there were soooo many things I didn't like: the composite face was too small for the body I'd attached them to, the background was too bright, the matte medium transfer of the soldiers was too opaque when layered on a woven fiber paper kind of like this, the tobacco field was on a transparency and it was too shiny...
I reprinted and repainted the composite face slightly larger, but not so much that it looked like it didn't belong. Okay. But it needed something to underline and yet soften the division between the two halves of his face. I found a vellum scrapbook sheet I'd bought ages ago, with the text "a man of good and moral character." It barely touched the canvas before I knew it would work. Much better.
I still had matte medium transfers of the soldiers and fields, so I tried switching their positions. And there it was... the soldier's uniform and the background color showed through the transfers just enough! Toned down the background, the wing and the vellum edge with a little more schmutzy color too. Then I drilled through the canvas, and pushed the eyelets into the holes with the eyelet hammer.
And since things were going so well, I highlighted one row of the tobacco field, and a couple of the soldier's hats. Done. I just need to cover the back and sign it, really.
He got out of the war with some respiratory problems. But his main health issues came from being shot several times by a local farmer who refused to pay up for farm work my great-grandfather did for him. I have no picture of him, but I do have that picture of five of his sons, plus one of my great-grandmother. So I composed a face for him using two of the faces that looked least like my great-grandmother.The first try just looked like crrrrrap, and I was so disappointed with the results I threw it out. (Yes, I know -- I should've just sanded it down and then painted it again or something. But it suhhhhhhcked!) At least I kept it until I figured out why it didn't work.
Oh, there were soooo many things I didn't like: the composite face was too small for the body I'd attached them to, the background was too bright, the matte medium transfer of the soldiers was too opaque when layered on a woven fiber paper kind of like this, the tobacco field was on a transparency and it was too shiny...
I reprinted and repainted the composite face slightly larger, but not so much that it looked like it didn't belong. Okay. But it needed something to underline and yet soften the division between the two halves of his face. I found a vellum scrapbook sheet I'd bought ages ago, with the text "a man of good and moral character." It barely touched the canvas before I knew it would work. Much better.
I still had matte medium transfers of the soldiers and fields, so I tried switching their positions. And there it was... the soldier's uniform and the background color showed through the transfers just enough! Toned down the background, the wing and the vellum edge with a little more schmutzy color too. Then I drilled through the canvas, and pushed the eyelets into the holes with the eyelet hammer.
And since things were going so well, I highlighted one row of the tobacco field, and a couple of the soldier's hats. Done. I just need to cover the back and sign it, really.