(continued from)
“Boos Attach”, the 14th collage of the Boos series, sort of summarizes some trends we’ve seen building up. We are now in the heart of little Tungaske village, with creatures called boos in both positive and negative aspect swarming on the western horizon. Buildings have been numbered, perhaps for conquest purposes. Is an attack really eminent per the collage’s title?
The yin-yang ball from collage 12 is being rolled into the center of town. Near it is giant sized Fitz from “12 Oz Mouse” with a meteor for a head. We’ve discussed the Tungaska slant for the collage series in Boos Overview 03 a bit. The meteor has landed. Between the similarly sized meteor and ball (are they suppose to represent the same thing?) is the head of yet another golf iron — we have 2 in the present collage, this one on the right side and then another to the left. Each is apparently wielded by a boos creature seen in the foreground, one negative/black and one positive/white. But the white one’s head is covered up by a spool table, another frequently repeating object in the series. This is obvious reference to Bigfoot again and its spool table, which has been called Brain Head, a yang element. The head of a golf iron does not touch the side of the spool table here, as it does in collage 08 and 11, but since the white boo holds the iron and his head has become the spool table, there’s still a direct relationship inferred, perhaps a more pictorially advanced one.
The black boo holds the golf iron whose head lies between the yin-yang sphere and Fitz-with-meteor-head. I think we have to associate those two spheres with each other. And then there are 2 more boos-as-spheres on the spool table, menacingly surrounding a Mario Brothers character with the table’s central hole showing between his legs. A “3” appears above his head. The grey boo on his left appears to be attacking him, while the one to the right merely closes his or her eyes, unable to watch. These might be the same as the “boos brothers” from the previous collage (“The Boos Brothers”), but, if so, their color is somewhat different, and they’ve sprouted wings in the meantime.
Let’s return to the matching spheres on the right. Are the Tungaske artists rolling the yin-yang ball — still with “Trapped Wheeler” inside — toward Fitz to replace the meteor on his head? Does Fitz need a new head since his old one has been pulverized? The head of the iron between the two begs us to think about this. This is about Bigfoot. This is about Tungaske. But chaos rules all around, and nothing really makes much sense, despite some obvious associations and links that can be made. Let us leave it for now as a depiction of an attack, with some form of damage control in effect.
The next collage, “The Unloading of Bigfoot”, may give us some additional clues about what is going on.
We are now on the other side of town from the downtown region depicted in “Boos Attach”. A giant shoe has touched down in a vacant meadow. It seems to be unloading red houses — some appear on the ground before it and some are still on the grassy landscape of the shoe. A giant mossman may be in charge of the unloading, aided by a blue octopus who resides in a pool inside the shoe. Another mossman stands on the road looking at the first one. And then the bird sculpture from collage 03 reappears here in the foreground, which I’ve already associated with the circular Bigfoot marble track. A dislodged poster advertising a Tungaske studio tour has fallen on the ground between it and the backwards turning mossman.
Bigfoot and these entities and objects seems to be coming to the rescue for Tungaske. While negative forces attack from the west, a balancing benevolent force appears in the east. Tungaske is most likely saved. We should probably assume that Bigfoot’s spool table is unloaded as the spool table on the property seen in collage 11, which is also on the eastern side of town and only one block down from the setting of collage 15 here. Their shared avenue is named Sask, short for Saskatchewan. Coming up we will visit locations on parallel Tungaske streets called Atlantic and Pacific.
(to be continued)
Sunklands 