Spooky it is

[Svenja Wahl]

 

Just when I wished for more Nancy-art I found this wonderful card in my mailbox. Nancy wrote that it was just too spooky to keep it and that she wondered, "To whom can I send it?" - I seemed to be quirky enough! I'm really happy to be quirkyfied!! I love it, the way the painting creeped (?) into the old paper, the fading colours... 

And I love the envelope too, definitely first class!! 

 

Thank you again!

[Nancy Bell Scott]

fading shades of taupe, David? FADING SHADES of TAUPE? The creeping stain of age, that's lovely a week after my birthday. Can't find murkled but it deserves to be found. It seems a travesty not to find "trickled" in this grand poetry you call a toast, but who needs the 1980s anyhow? Yes, my glass is risen. Thank you.

[David Stafford]

Yeah, I'm not given to quoting from the Bible much myself but you gotta admit Jesus was all over the worthiness of the original artifact. Our Father of the Collage some people called him. Nancy, raise a toast with me now to the old and wrinkled, the soiled and sprinkled, the boiled and tinkled, all things dappled with dust, covered in must, smothered in musk, the divine we seek in the creeping stain of age, the faded and the curled, the mottled and the murkled, the fading shades of taupe that radiate from his brow, a nimbus of nostalgia.

[Nancy Bell Scott]

[deep biblical and merry laughter happening here.] You putteth a rent in the focus that resideth rarely in the castle of moi. The garments inneth closets were heretofore invaded by said rents, as was their destiny which no man shall fail to preserve. Oh, and the old is better, you got it.

[David Stafford]

Oh, Oh....200 panes...Smiting my brow here. Of course....The Bible weighs in here: "And he spake also a parable unto them; No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better." Shorter version....The old is better. But I like the image of Jesus' saying "putteth" and then making a bunch of corny lisp jokes....

[Nancy Bell Scott]

(It was 200 panes of glass, not 100, but why be petty.)  I was probably repeating myself, poorly: saying that working with old images on new (photocopy) paper is like working on the art from a huge distance, through many walls or obstacles. You can't get at it, can't really touch what it represents, at least as close as one can get to doing that, because the new paper sets you apart. Does this make more sense?

That was a delightful mangled metaphor, by the way.

[David Stafford]

Hmmm, I wish I knew if I'm understanding you completely. What mean you by "looking through 100 panes of glass." Too many images in the kitchen makes the soup tasteless? (They don't call me the "Metaphor Mangler" for nothing.)

[Nancy Bell Scott]

Oh David. Even if the study isn't successfully carried out, won't you dress up as you describe below and send us pictures? It's not like having the real thing but will have to do. (Why did Groucho Marx come to mind as I read the description of your get-up?)

It is, it is part of the artistic process. If we're going to work with new paper, then why make it new paper with fake old pictures on it? Instead, we can just use today's material and make trashpo with it. I'm all for both. Just not that in-between faux part that feels like working through 200 panes of glass that make the real thing untouchable. This is subjective opinion, of course. I'd like to see that study carried out.

[David Stafford]

We'll have to conduct a study with control groups and rabbits and I'll wear a lab coat and have glasses with thick black rims and a pocket protector and a clipboard. I may need a pipe as well. Two works: one with original ephemera, one with xeroxed or digital ephemera...which has the greater impact. Somehow sacrificing actual pristine ephemera seems like part of the artistic process unless it has genuine historical value which is true of little of it. It makes the work you do to it, on it, with it, somehow sacred and serious.

[Svenja Wahl]

Nancy and Theresa, no, of course I don't mind , but the original has to stay here, I won't give it away anymore!!! (HANDS OFF, as CP would say) ... :-))

[Nancy Bell Scott]

Very funny, Frieder, very funny! If you'd told me the blue is all hair I'd have kept it. From now on I will always check with you first about fashion.

David, you're right, it is real--from a large falling-apart bound volume of the magazine The Outlook, early 1900s. The covers were gone, and some other parts of the book, when it came in a box lot at a funky "tailgate" auction I went to for years. The paper is wonderful with inks and paints, and this ghost of a book has been on my art table for a very long time. Usually I work only on the all-text pages, though. This guy got my attention by allowing one dime-sized splotch of blue ink to fall on his head while something else was being worked on. I try to save most images for other people since I rarely use them, am too abstract.

That's a very interesting question you raise. In earlier days, even with falling-apart ephemera, I was reluctant to alter it and photocopied it instead, but found that photocopies killed my inspiration somehow. I've gotten rid of most of them--just can't work with them. Or did you mean "virtual" in the digital sense? To this day I wouldn't even consider altering or using ephemera that's in good shape, collectible, desirable as is to someone. I was lucky to have a steady source of broken-down stuff from the tailgate auction. Man, what a bunch of characters went to those, they were a blast.

Theresa, I can post the image or send it to you, if Svenja, the Real Owner, doesn't mind.