November 19, 2011 – Art in 30 Minutes or Less

As a general rule, most of my work could qualify as “slow” art. When I work it’s usually a slow, labor-intensive process. But this morning I decided to give myself the 30-minute collage challenge. A kitchen timer was used as part of the process.

1. 10 minutes to go through my various collage fodder and find some pieces that would work together.
2. 10 minutes for cutting and configuring.
3. 10 final minutes for assembling, gluing and finishing.

And yes, the collage was completed in just under 30 minutes. At times it is good to have a bit of discipline and control over one’s work. But in some ways, there was more time involved. The 4”x4” canvases are prepped in advance and the accumulation of collage material is an ongoing process. A photo was used that I picked up at SCRAP in the late 1990’s and some Basquiat bits from an old Art in America that I clipped almost 20 years ago. My alternate title for this piece would be The Conquest of Basquiat.

January 26, 2011 – The Carr Family Vacation

I never met the Carr Family, but I do know that 50 years ago they took a month long trip around the Mediterranean. In 1996 I bought a large scrapbook/album at a yard sale on Page Street that documented their adventure. It made me sad to see the album so casually discarded. It was clearly a labor of love. I took it as a mission to rescue it for $10. The album had already been cannibalized. Every personal photo had been removed, only the hand written captions remained giving me a clue to what was missing.

The album did have the carefully typed and detailed itinerary created by a travel agent. There were maps, boarding passes, ticket stubs from tours, museums and nightclubs. Menus, matchbooks, hotel stationary, postcards and all sorts of ephemera that I also love to accumulate when I travel.

What I do know is that at the beginning of August 1961, Mr. and Mrs. John F. Carr Jr. their daughter Joyce and son John Carr III set out from Cambridge, Mass. for Madrid, then to Rome, Greece, Israel and Jordan. The return had them visiting Egypt and then Lisbon before returning to the U.S. All this accomplished in a little over a month. As all the family photos were removed, I have no idea what they looked like. It’s clear from the hand written captions that the son John put the album together. Over the years it has been a great source of material in my own mixed media work and it gets remembered again in my piece for today.