a sketch as of 2/7/10


a sketch as of 2/8/10


I have been trying to substitute images of objects for hoarding actual objects in my studio (I can tell you it is only working so-so). This weekend I decided to lay out about a quarter of what I have cut out onto pieces of paper.

A rule that I have for myself is that I am not to purchase the magazines. I have to find them or they have to be given to me. This is to, hopefully, diversify what I have in my stock of images. But I will admit that while going through the magazines I tend to gravitate towards the candy colored glossy "girly" shapes and colors.... and to the images of food.

I am a vegetarian but I am so attracted to the images of animal flesh in magazines it is unreal. I don't desire to eat it as much as sit down and stare at it. It is a combination of horror and desire. I always think of Carolee Schneemann's Meat Joy and how it made me so mad the first time I saw it but also how I desired to be naked and have a chicken slapped against my body.

The problem that I am finding with my collection of cut-outs is that I am being a bit fussy about them. I am a little afraid to use them and worried that I might run out of them or not use them to their fullest extent. As a kid I would cut images out of catalogs and newspapers and just staple them right into the wall, my room was covered from floor to ceiling and on the ceiling with cut-outs (my parents let me because I was afraid of the oak walls with their knots that looked like fierce faces). I think that I need to approach my current collection in a similar way otherwise they are just going to keep being tucked away in envelopes and eventually yellow and crumble....we'll see.

On magazine images Isa Newby Gagarin has a collaborative piece up at the Rochester Art Center. Smells Like Teen Spirit is a collaboration with students from the Rochester Art Center on collecting pictures and appropriating them into an artistic book/installation. The show is up until April 11th, 2010 in the Atrium Gallery.