Daily Archives: December 16, 2015

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Up we go to the top floor of the Boos Gallery via a teleporter again. In the room’s more confined space, viewers are confronted by what amounts to two diptychs on opposite, long walls, both rather unusual in design in comparison to others of this kind I’ve created. These are the only 2 multi-panel works of the Boos series. On the 2 perpendicular, shorter walls are hung smaller, simpler works both based on more antique Tungaske photos. And the 2nd and last diptych is also based on same.

Let’s start, then, with collages 26 and 27. Here’s how they appear in the gallery…

The unusual aspect of this “diptych”, collectively called “2 Fer 1”, is that it shows the same 2 older Tungaske buildings, even most of the same collaged-in characters placed around these buildings, but from opposite directions. We’ve seen these similar white clapboard/ green roofed structures before. They appear in the background of “Comparative Heights” two collages back.

In “2 Fer 1 01”, we’re simply changing angles a bit and zooming into the matching buildings. We have a former school of the town on the right, and a former church to the left. Both stand on the same property, which at present time is up for sale. Like with all the miniatures of the Boos series coming before it, I used photos found on realtor’s sites as a base to build up from. I didn’t alter the dimensions of either of the two selected photos for the collages.

“2 Fer 1 01”

The 2 tall green alien thingies of “Comparative Heights” have now disappeared or either moved off camera to the right. In their stead appear new images. We have, front and center, the head of Marge Simpson — who is, of course, Lisa’s mother in “The Simpsons” show — atop a female human body of taller dimensions, it seems. I believe this represents both Marge the mother and Lisa the daughter in one, perhaps when Lisa is all grown up and a mother herself. Two her left (our right) comes a blue-green 6 legged horse that we’ll also see in the second diptych of this floor. Here it trots on the boundary between shadow and sunlight, but its body remains shaded. Contrast this to sun bathed toy avatar Taum Sauk sitting on a rust colored car to Lisa’s right. Bright vs. shade, then; light against dark. Also in the foreground (far left) is another 12 Oz Mouse character we first saw in Collage 03 (“The Rock”), who again appears in female form here but is actually half man, half woman, harking back to Lisa’s androgynous state. She appears to be in lit the sun as well. And then two more collage-in images appear in the background of “2 Fer 1 01”, which we’ll see better in the second part of the dipytch. These are Baker Bloch himself, alongside a reclining Chef Dick Halloran culled from the epicenter of The Shining movie.

In “2 Fer 1 02”, we’ve merely swiveled our viewing angle basically 180 degrees and moved it to the edge of the woods just behind Baker Bloch. From this adjusted angle toward the old school and church we see most of the same objects from “2 Fer 1 01” but also a couple of new ones. There’s of course Baker Bloch and Dick Halloran again in the foreground, then we can spy the blue-green horse in the background, which appears to be in the same position as in “2 Fer 1 01”. Then Marge headed woman stands beside it still, but with her blue hair queerly merged with the long snout of the blue-green horse. Both she and Halloran still face the camera, as if they’ve swiveled around in position with us. Then absent from “2 Fer 1 02” is Taum Sauk and 12 Oz Mouse’s Man/Woman character with the red ball, apparently hidden from sight now by the rust colored car and white clapboard schoolhouse respectively.

“2 Fer 1 02”

The new characters of the second part of “2 Fer 1” are Mr. Bean, positioned near the center of the collage, and then former PGA golfer Tom Kite in the right foreground, wielding yet another golf iron of the Boos series. In fact, Mr. Kite is famous for his iron game, which I only learned about after creating the collage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Kite

In his prime Kite had few peers with the short irons. In 1993, Johnny Miller referred to Kite as “the greatest short-iron player the game has seen.

(to be continued)

Let’s temporarily skip further discussion of “Comparative Heights” to move to the 25th Boos collage, called “Bitter Rivals”. To me this seems to be an even simpler work, not far in spirit from the miniature but larger in overall scale. The scene is clear. We have an old Tungaske baseball team returning to the right, although I’m not sure we have the same people represented. To the left we have the same picture of the team blotted out by red-violet flowers that appear to be pansies. These are the “bitter rivals” of the title, fronting a beautiful Tungaske sunset seen from approximately the same location as that of collage 14 (“The Unloading of Bigfoot”), or on the western edge of the town very near the artist’s house depicted in collage 11 as well. I believe those are even some of the same trees represented.

We’ve already associated this artist with Lisa Simpson or “Lisa the Vegetarian” through evidence gleaned in collages 19 through 23. Appropriately, we have the return of Lisa Simpson for the present collage, appearing in outline form between the two “rivals”. But, importantly, the outlined is doubled through inversion. Lisa cannot side with either team but, like the setting sun behind her, has to remain neutral. As Lisa has also been directly associated with a setting (or rising) sun in collage 22, we must assume the same here. What are the rivals? Since the flowers are culled from an advertisement for the Tungaske cemetery, they represent the dead of the town. And since all the players to the right are in all likelihood deceased now, the collage weaves a tale of past (living) colliding with present (dead). Tungaske is a dying town in that the population slowly seems to be trickling away. Again, the dead threaten to rule, vanquishing or “blotting out” a modern rival, perhaps perceived as johnnies-come-lately. The fight is between past and present, with Lisa standing between the two.

The heroine of our story does not appear in “Comparative Heights”, but her image is the last I edited out of a final draft for that collage. I decided to include an excerpt from this penultimate version as collage 25.5 of the Boos series which I call “Q Girl”, bringing Lisa to the forefront at last and not hidden. Her signature lemon tags along.

Per the title, she stands in the “Q” of the delineated “Q Street” from Google Maps’ Streetview. Given that Dorothy’s upraised arm in the overall collage points directly at mystery writing in the sky that seems to spell out a more derogatory word for “queer”, we can also assume that “Q” stands for the same. This may be a kind of coming out moment for the girl, or a realization at least of her gay or, more likely, bisexual nature. This has antecedents in “The Simpsons” show, where several times it is hinted that Lisa is a lesbian.

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/LGBT_characters

In the episode “Holidays of Future Passed”, a montage of photos were featured to show a glimpse of whats to come for the Simpsons family. Lisa is shown intimately holding hands with two women in one photo, then with a different woman in another photo.

I’m also reminded that the flowers in “Bitter Rivals” are pansies, which is another slang word for “gays”.

Drawing further back, Lisa Simpson represents the androgyny or two headed rebis:

In alchemy, androgyny is a symbol of immortality, transcendence and totality. It is the triumph over the deceptive duality resulting from the creation of the universe. It also stands for the merging of the selves, the triumph over mind and ego, and the accord between sameness and diversity, particularly duality.

“Q Girl” provides a summary point for the floor 3 collages of the virtual Boos gallery in Collagesity now, a period to their sentence. But we still have one more, smaller floor to examine. Lisa leads us upwards.

Nautilus City

Collagesity

(to be continued)