Category Archives: collages 2d

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)

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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)

Apparently I’m not done with the series (!) I’m going to have to modify the Boos gallery to accommodate new work, however. We’ll see how it goes. Excitement!

“This Town Ain’t Big Enough”

“This Town Ain’t Big”

“Enough”

“Battling The Boos”

And now I’m *really* out of room in the gallery. So this may be it; unable to extend the gallery upwards, it seems (btw, land is up for sale in Minoa again).

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A sphere is also found in the next collage of the Boos series, another 2 part animation. I call it “The Boos Brothers”. Mars is the ball in question now, looming impossibly large in a lakeside setting. Two round creatures baring sharp teeth fly in front of it in part 1, who I know to be the Boos brothers of the title. Perhaps they also stand for Mars’ two moons Phobos and Deimos. They head toward a rust colored silhouette of a woman perched on the bank of the lake. This is actually another statue created for the same Tungaske art event that produced the sphere covered in collage 12 before this. The word RUST appears on the sandy incline below it. A spaceman walks in the lake carrying a large box. Peter from The Fringe swims directly in front of him (or her). He looks toward the rusty woman, seemingly in alarm. His head is framed by the spaceman’s box.

In part 2 of 2, the Boos Brothers have almost moved off-camera to the right. The rusty female torso is nowhere to be seen; have the brothers *eaten* her? The spaceman has moved in front of Peter. His box has shrunk, and he can carry it with one arm. The other arm, now free, reaches toward a tiny cave in the lake bank. We cannot see the hand of the arm. Has it also been “eaten” or somehow lopped off? Or is it just queerly hidden in the shadow?

So what is the meaning of all this? Mars, I believe, is a direct extension of the yin-yang ball seen in the previous collage, and refers to the question, “what’s black and white and red all over?” The traditional answer to this koan is a newspaper or, sometimes, an embarrassed skunk or a zebra with a rash. Here it could be the red planet Mars. A 31 kilometer Martian crater has been named for the town of Tungaske, but noone seems to know the reason why. The boos creatures are perhaps confused about their place of origin. Is it the Martian crater or the town that the crater is named for? At any rate, we know from the next collage that they and their numerous brethren in both black and white forms are headed toward Tungaske en masse.

The boos creatures are introduced here because it was at this general point I decided to name the still evolving collage series that name, after a village in Jasper County, Illinois. I explain some of this in the Boos Overview 01 post. I googled “boos” images and all these round eyed toys came popping up. The two I used in the collage are apparently Mario ghost boos, a malevolent strain.

And I should also put forth the idea here that the map duad Jasper-Newton itself is a yin-yang symbol. In Illinois, the county seat Newton is submerged inside the county of Jasper, as if a seed. In Arkansas the situation is reversed. This duad also represents the two sides of our US of A, or north (Illinois) and south (Arkansas). They also stand for conscious and unconscious states of being, a bigger tableau. If Mars is both, then we are truly dealing with powers of a high intensity indeed.

http://www.insistpost.com/cycle-of-karma-and-reincarnation/

Interesting reading about “hungry ghosts” here:

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

It is believed that the soul contains elements of both yin and yang. The yin is the kui, or demon part, and the yang is the shen, or spirit part. When death occurs, the kui should return to earth, and the shen to the grave or family shrine. If a ghost is neglected, it will become a kui. The shen, or ancestral spirit watches over its descendants, and can bring good fortune if properly worshipped.

(to be continued)

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And then in the 10th collage of the Boos series, called “Goodwater Goodland 02,” we have a direct continuation and also *inversion* of the central images of “Goodwater Goodland 01” coming before it. The Tungaske mural is now seen as a *whole* and not in several parts, albeit with rectangular holes where the smaller differently angled pictures have been removed. The inverted image is, however, still superimposed over the same rusty looking funerary book found in the town cemetery.

It’s a very simple but startlingly effective work to me. With this mere single addition, a cemetery monument has transformed into an alien face, which I originally dubbed “The Martian”. We have gone quite a ways now from the relative rawness of the first several collages of the series, and have seemingly latched onto a newer, more powerful artistic energy. I identify this with the energy emitted from the town of Tungaske itself, an artistic hamlet after all. I didn’t really grasp this probability until after creating “Goodwater Goodland 02” and then doing some subsequent research.

I could have stopped here in the series, happy with the transmutation of base elements of collages 01 and 02 into a new form with the inversion of these Tungaske core elements from 9 into 10. I’d symbolically flipped around the tajitu sphere appearing in 9 from yin to yang, seemingly.

Many of my collage series come to a halt with the 10th work, after all, including the 3 that appeared before this (Sam Parr, Embarras, Stonethrow). But it was destiny that I forge ahead in this case, the first time this “extension” has happened since the Falmouth series unfurled about a year and a half ago now. Boos was destined to contain around 27 collages as a whole by present count.

Missouri would not appear again in the series. Tungaske has taken the upper hand.

completed floor 1

(to be continued)