Trashporustpomobile and more from Diane Keys

[Nancy Bell Scott]

It's trashpo, and it's rustpo, and it hangs: 

Opening this was like ZING--is it my birthday?--it would be hard to choose one, but this has to be my all-time favorite from Diane. It is a major hit here. I hung it on a post for its very first photo:But it is already blowing around to different, 360-degree spots. It must be seen from all angles, and listened to. Diane's daughter helped her pick out the parts, and also included was a great little collage by her daughter, on corrugated cardboard, which I also love: Is she a chip off the old block or what? Other found stuff was in the envelope, as well as this collage by Diane:

Oh man, only 4 images this time??? The site is forcing this last piece to be the first comment below. Thanks again for all, Diane, this whole envelope is fabulous.

[DKeys]

DW, I only just now got that joke--love it. For some reason my mind went more to Steak Diane

[Claire (aka Cleo)]

ha ha ha!

[De Villo Sloan]

One DK coming up! Medium Rare!

[DKeys]

Such nice comments in this discussion. I have to say that I consider 100 percent of my art channeled-not from martians through the radio, but for me, it is a communication -whether that be with my unconscious, higher power, higher self, space aliens, trashpo jesus, roadkill dieties.

[De Villo Sloan]

This discussion of the Di-Vinity of DK is interesting for sure. At points of upheaval in modern history, you see poets re-adopting earlier roles of prophets & shaman - like Blake & Holderlein in Romanticism & later Allen Ginsberg as I mentioned.

With the Trashpocalypse, etc., sometimes Trashpo seems to me to be part of some larger global upheaval because it challenges environmental destruction & consumerism. And I agree Nancy, DK has always had that quality of carrying this huge message.

So "Trashpo Jesus" wasn't completely a joke.

[Nancy Bell Scott]

You mean it's not some secret that only longer term veterans are privy to?? Many thanks, Claire. 

[Claire (aka Cleo)]

Wow, I really, Really like this collage!

[Claire (aka Cleo)]

wow, this is Great Diane - love it!

And: indeed she is! (Wish my mother had had such an influence! %_)

btw NBS: Just publish the blog, then return to it and choose "edit" from the menu - you can add more photos that way.

[Nancy Bell Scott]

You'd think Spicer would have come up with a less common planet, you know?

Yes, the artist as medium. That could especially apply to DK too because she works so very intuitively and instinctively. You don't even have to talk to her or know her to understand how she works--it's in the work itself. She is selective about her materials, as we saw in her videos, but then I think another plane of seeing takes over. I suspect many artists who use found materials or individually created materials consider art a spiritual activity. I know I do--the materials are like live creatures to me with spirits and thoughts--and a good number of IUOMA comments tend to suggest similar outlooks. I don't know how many in the so-called real art world consider the process a spiritual one. Probably fewer in percentage, but it's just a guess.

[De Villo Sloan]

The comments address the range of how the individual artists can use "methods" such as word collage, cut-ups, found texts. At one extreme, you can invent systems to generate random texts - as in John Cage & Jackson MacLow - and it's almost scientific or mathematical. You can do it with software. In the end, there's not a lot of individual expression involved.

 

Then there is a looser approach - sort of the artist as medium - where there is more hands on involvement with selection and arrangement of material, I see that happening more with DK, John Bennett, Ficus, etc. That tends toward the idea of visionary poetry more. For instance, I never can stop puzzling over poet Jack Spicer, a relatively sane linguist otherwise, who insisted that all his poetry was dictated to him by Martians speaking through a radio. He never, never waivered from the position that this was the literal truth of where his poetry came from.

 

Especially when you are dealing with Trashpo - like we discussed with Lynn Radford once - you can see it as receiving all these messages inscribed on things you pick up, and for some people it does start to be a spiritual activity - they start to feel as if there is a coherence - and it's not just a nihilist act of creating something incomprehensible (implying life and the world are ultimately meaningless).

 

So I marvel at the DK work because it does seem to actually say something, and I don't think it is anything she's trying to manipulate, but her unconscious maybe or something is creating something meaningful, Isn't that the function of a medium? But not everyone has those powers.