(continued from)
With collages 16 & 17 of the Boos series, we now move into the realm of the true miniatures, which I suppose make their first appearance here in my digital collage series, or at least as far as I can recall. This is by necessity more than design: I seemed to be running out of online Tungaske photos to use as collage bases and “resorted” to several realty company’s low rez pictures from houses for sale in the village. The two places that kept appearing in searches happened to be on Atlantic and Pacific avenues, parallel to Sask Avenue just seen in collage 15, as already stated (the latter street also previously viewed in the foreground of collage 11, “Hucka Homebee”). I liked the way the names indicated an oceanic frame, as for the continental US as a whole — or Canada as a whole as I’m thinking through it again.
I’m not sure how much there is to scrutinize about these mini-collages, 4 in number. But let’s see what happens. Here’s the two from “Atlantic” to begin, which I jointly assigned to collage 16:
“Atlantic 01”
“Atlantic 02”
I was also digging back into early collages series for images by this point, and came up with a juxtaposition of “Falling Dorothy 01” and “Mr. Bean with turkey on head” for “Atlantic 01”, and then “Waving Truman” and “Crouching Baker B.” for “Atlantic 02”. The first presents a tableau of imbalance, hosted by a many angled, upstairs room. The colors of the images match those of the room. Is this truly a “Matrix”? Is it a turkey of a house (sorry)? The second begs perhaps a couple more questions. What is Crouching Baker examining to the left with his magnifying glass? Is he checking the wiring, the plumbing? Truman waves howdy, ready to move in at a moment’s notice. As soon as Baker finishes inspecting whatever he’s inspecting (told you there may not be much to examine).
The two mini-collages of “Pacific” are slightly more complex. In “Pacific Won”, we have handless, lego-ish dude seen in past collages attending to a prostrate Mr. Bean with an image of Nauvoo Illinois’ Lake Horton emerging from his back. A little bit more meat to this won one; something we can perhaps gnaw on.
“Pacific Won”
Lake Horton can be seen as a *terminal* image for the huge Falmouth series in an excised remake of its collage 43, a two part animation entitled “Cover Up”.
“Cover Up 02”
I won’t show the remake because it’s the same combination of images now seen in “Pacific Won” here: Lake Horton emerging from the back of the identical prone image of Mr. Bean. Has Mr. Bean actually drowned in this earlier collage instead of merely drinking water from the tarn? Is this a dark, malevolent spirit departing a dead body? The grey dude who has lost his hands: does this symbolize the inability to grasp physical objects from the afterlife? I believe this is a moment of death, leading from the occluded Mr. Bean in “Atlantic 01”, with senses such as sight and hearing impaired. This is a body on the decline; the headless turkey obscuring the head of a man, also making him headless in turn. You are what you eat, I guess.
And the same handless grey dude appears in the Falmouth collage, more in the foreground now than beside Mr. Bean. But he also lacks a head, or it is covered by an 8 ball. While this dude is without hands, there are *two* other disattached hands in “Cover Up 02” (yes I realize disattached isn’t a word but I still like to use it at times). What are they doing? The larger one in the foreground is covering up two cubic blue objects (Cubic Peanut and Big E). What are they saying to each other, these two cubic beings who may be dual aspects of one entity? Why does it have to be covered up, per the title? Is this also a “living dialog” snuffed out by the fated hand of death?
Let’s just leave it that “Pacific Won” depicts a moment of death where the soul departs the body, but is still trapped, perhaps, in the terrestrial realm like a (hungry?) ghost.
If so, “Pacific Too” may be a resolution of sorts…
“Pacific Too”
… Lemony World guided by Lisa the Vegetarian to the rescue. She gobbles no meat and thus no turkey. She becomes not the wildly darting, ever mobile *fowl* but remains plant and mineral, rooted in Earth’s fair soil. She does not appear in “Pacific Too” but is inferred by another Simpsons character Martin Prince, another waver who appears very early in the Greenup series from 2004 — in fact, the very first digital collage I made. He is an original being, then, an Adam for my collages. He might have a love interest for Lisa, although in the Simpsons series this is more commonly assigned to brother Bart’s best bud Milhouse, if I recall correctly. And we also have more lemons in this first collage as well, conscious reference to another Simpsons episode “Lemon of Troy” talked about in other places on this blog. And, oh yeah, Martin also has a magnifying glass, like Crouching Baker. He thus shares elements in common with both the characters in “Atlantic 02”.
“Greenup 01: “Lemon Tree and Niche”
And then the third and last element added to the base photo of “Pacific Too” is The Beatles’ yellow submarine, which also makes several appearances in Greenup. Here in its diagonal form I believe it represents *positive* ascension and correct escape from the Earthly plane. And I forgot to mention that there’s a similar third, collaged-in image from “Atlantic 02”, also found in the Greenup series. I’ll just say here that the miniature burning car dropped from Truman’s waving hand is more in line with malevolent, horizontal/vertical forces, and ones that pin the soul to the ground.
Despite being a miniature, I believe that “Pacific Too” is a considerably better collage than “Finding the Niche”. I’ve learned about putting these things together in the meantime. So there’s that element of growth to throw into the interpretation as well. And growth through contraction is sometimes a way to go.
(to be continued)
Sunklands 