Monthly Archives: December 2015

(continued from)

We draw back out to see the whole of Tungaske in “Neither Atlantic Nor Pacific”, the 20th collage of the Boos series. The title refers to the town’s 2 avenues featured in the miniatures of “Atlantic” and “Pacific” — 2 apiece. And we will return to the same Pacific Avenue house currently for sale in the next set of miniatures coming up. In “Neither Atlantic Nor Pacific”, we continue to evolve the various stories building up in the village. An image of Ohio’s former Great Black Swamp has been inserted in its center, roughly situated between the two avenues in question. Boxy Brown with see-through hair is positioned on its upper end from the picture’s perspective, opposite fellow Aqua Teen Hunger Force character Master Shake, also appearing as partially transparent.

This is yet another yin-yang reference, since Shake is very white and Boxy Brown is an abstract representation of an African-American (“black”) man. We’ve seen these same two characters placed on opposite sides of another body of water in the Stonethrow collage “Animation Station”, the first part of the ending tetraptych of that May 2015 series.

Also returning from the May collage is homeless man, already used in collage 09 of the present series (“Goodwater Goodland 01”). Here he is detached from Boxy Brown’s hair and appears below him instead. The sewer top he holds down with one hand now marks the exact spot of a Tungaske labyrinth also referred to in “Wrong Way Whales”, and likewise circular in form. Then opposite homeless man in the the upper left corner is flying Superman from “Superman III” holding Richard Prior in his arms. And then the last collaged-in element to the aerial photo of Tungaske in “Neither Atlantic Nor Pacific” is a central slice of the book cover for “The Ordained”, a mystery novel by Terence Faherty. It appears nearer homeless man in the lower right corner, and in the exact spot of the house featured in “Hucka Homebee”, collage 11 of the Boos series.

The image of the Great Black Swamp is also featured in another Stonethrow collage called “Beware (The) Healers” that we’ve already examined in reference to collage 12. This swamp use to exist just beyond the western edge of Lake Erie. In connection with the present collage’s title, this is then neither Atlantic nor Pacific but more toward the center of America, in the Great Lakes region.

A description of “The Ordained” from Terence Faherty’s site:

The residents of the isolated town of Rapture, founded by an Adventist sect, the Ordained of God, are disappearing one by one. The Ordained believed that the world would end in 1844 and that they would be taken bodily into heaven. Now, one hundred and fifty years after their rapture failed to occur, something very similar is happening to their descendants.

Another small town, another one that’s “losing” people. Only Owen Keane, the book’s protagonist and an ordained minister himself, can save the town by solving its central mystery. I think this ties into art being able to save Tungaske. The fellow “junk” artist who lives in the house of collage 11 becomes the savior archetype, and in synch with fellow deity Lisa “The Vegetarian” Simpson. The overlaid swamp symbolizes the morass, the abyss, a kind of mass grave like a cemetery but also a stand-in for hell, perhaps. Door to The Abyss, then. Richard Prior is black like the swamp, but also he is a “prior”, or one who is stuck in time. Rescue by Superman represents ascent to heaven, or perhaps rapture. The swamp is no longer a threat. All these pictorial elements tie together to present a scene of hope beyond despair, eternity beyond earthly bondage. The town can be saved. The world can be saved. Like the labyrinth, a satisfying mystery novel directs a plot line into and out of a core dilemma.

(to be continued)

Well, what we can see immediately is the bookend type framework provided by normally colored Fitz on the left side, and inverse colored Fitz — or at least his torso and his beer — on the right side. This reminds us of the pillars Boaz and Jachin guarding the entrance to the Temple of Solomon in Biblical times.

And, of course, this ties into the yin-yang symbols again. But the inverted Fitz to the right is partially replaced, like a bionic entity, by parts of a normally colored Lisa Simpson or Lisa The Vegetarian as I call her here more commonly, mainly most of her head a little bit of her body. This exchange seems important, since Lisa, when taking a foothold in the Boos series with this collage in her true cartoon form, sticks around to appear in many of the remaining works that wrap it up. We’ve seen Fitz before, starting in collage 06 — in Nautilus City with a meteor flying toward his head — and continuing in collage 14 — head pulverized by meteor in Tungaske. Here he is sans meteor, and leans over to stare at a hole in the ground. This particular image involving Fitz the Mouse was used in several other pre-Boos collages of mine, including the fully animated tetraptych that ended the last series in May (Stonethrow). In fact, the hole appears at the very center of this large collage, perhaps the most complicated I have created so far.

So the hole, and Fitz along with it, represents *center*. But in “I Must Be Going. Hello!” the hole is pushed to one side as far as you can get. Here the leaning-in motion of examining Fitz is emphasized by the position of characters to his right (Peanut and Insanoflex). What is in the hole? We know it is yet another paradox, which sometimes goes by the name of Greenup/yellow down.

bb:

The bug goes down as Don tries to piss (down). *Freeze* the (12 Oz Mouse) DVD, then unpause as the green liquid erupts *up* from the ground as the narrator for Don Aman says “it finally came” — the yellow piss erupts *down*. This the concept of Greenup/Yellow Down, Hucka D.

Hucka D.:

Indeed it is. Or was.

In looking at it closer, I think the relationship of the 2 Fitz’s and Lisa represents another flipping, like we had between collages 9 and 10 but in one picture this time. The Boos collage series is staking another claim to its own identity, building upon a base resonance of Tungaske. Greenup/Yellow Down is a concept that is moved into the past and away from the present center, and, in resonance with collage 11, little front-and-center Hucka D. seems to be putting his stamp of approval on this idea. Boos is setting itself apart from previous series like Stonethwaite, like Falmouth and all the others. And it is doing so through Lisa. Let’s see where this takes us…

*And* I’ve just redesigned this collage by moving the right side directly against Fitz’s bottle, which makes Fitz a true framer for the Hucka D. doll now at the actual epicenter of all this. I rest my case.

(to be continued)