Exploring My Interior's Interiors

Been itching for about a week now to make a collage. It's an art form I don't indulge in much at present. It seems everyone is making collages, and I'm enough of a snob to avoid the latest trend. (Unless the trend is cool, and on sale at Target.)

But when I do make a collage I get upset because it isn't like everyone else's. I feel odd because other people don't have issues with using a computer (I do -- it's cheating!) or with drawing or painting on top of their works. Worse yet, today it seems like the best way to "fit in" with other collage artists is to make images featuring a bunch of Victoriana, and people sporing either dunce's caps or fairy wings.

I can see the allure -- the manifest copyright issues force people to use either personal or public domain material. Their decisions are sensible and wise. Sadly, I don't have much to say that can be communicated using fairy wings. So instead I use whatever scrap of paper furthers my meaning, knowing I can never reproduce anything I create. And after I create something I break the law a little by reproducing my art via a low-resolution photograph posted on the Internet.

There are reasons I don't teach ethics . . . .

So -- been itching to make a collage. A book has me all hot about personal altars, so I was going to rip the sun visor out of my car and make it an alter to Jane Austen and then put it back in the car. But all these negative Sara Lee (Similar and Regular and Like Everybody Else) feelings hit, so I ditched that idea. Decided to make a Valentine instead, something I used to do regularly. I used to actually make them for men, but I lost the Valentines in the breakups, so I decided it would be better to keep them for myself. I don't think the guys understood, anyway. I was giving them part of my soul, and all I ever got in return was a weak smile followed by an even weaker "you-shouldn't-have."

This Valentine was going to be about wanting someone to share my sofa. Planned on including a television, maybe popcorn, DVDs, etc. Decided to make it on an envelope for some reason. But about halfway through the process it became something different.

It became a collage about my living room, my perfectly-arranged, much-loved living room, the scene of many a sofa-centered fantasy. And about the time I got drunk in that room, the only time I've been drunk in my life. I cried over how empty the sofa was, how time was passing, and how I wished I had enough nerve to place a simple drunken phone call and tell him how I felt. And all about the sheer impossibility of him ever feeling the way I do. If it had happened anywhere else I wouldn't have felt so damn pathetic.

The collage below is a start. It needs a better clock. I want a Nielsen bubble clock, but I couldn't find one. Also a phone. All the phones I found were almost as big as the sofa. And I want to replace the flying toaster (a trademarked logo, if memory serves) with a flying pig. Maybe add a floor lamp. Maybe. It's really external to the story, but I need to show how loved this room is. Not really crazy about the sofa with this wallpaper, either, so those could change. I do like the way the green contrasts with the red and pink wine, but in real life I'd never put those two together. Need to do something to make the other side of the sofa obviously empty. Maybe a larger crowd of wine glasses on the other side?? The balance is a little too perfect. I want the entire thing to look sad. A little shopworn.

I wrote in my journal while I was getting drunk. I'm going to print up the entry and place it inside the envelope.




This might be the start of a series. Maybe. I want to explore how interiors shape our expectations, and what happens when reality collides with these very personal dreams. I can think of another five or six rooms I'd like to re-create off the top of my head. Places where things happened, where my life changed. An office with the world's ugliest desk. A storeroom with stacks of white boxes and poor lighting. Two bedrooms; one in an attic. A library. A kitchen. A hallway with an oriental rug. A garage with a band saw and a drill press. My childhood playroom.

This might be worth doing. I can unite my mania for interior design with my mania for self-expression. And those envelopes could hold anything. Anything at all.