Rosebud

So I was looking for a name for my new piece and I was reminded this morning, by my dear friend Mia Troy, about Rosebud. The single word whispered by Charles Foster Kane, the enigma, the mystery that propels the movie, Citizen Kane,  forward.

Via Wikipedia: (The reporter )"Thompson finds that he is unable to solve the mystery and concludes that "Rosebud" will forever remain an enigma. He theorizes that "Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted, and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost." In the ending of the film, it is revealed to the audience that Rosebud was the name of the sled from Kane's childhood – an allusion to the only time in his life when he was truly happy. The sled, thought to be junk, is burned and destroyed in a basement furnace by Xanadu's departing staff."

Very appropriate for a piece that was assemblage from "junk" found at an estate sale...

So now, she is Rosebud.

New Work: untitled

I love October and all of the harvest festivities that come long with it. Apple picking, raking the leaves, putting the garden to bed... it also means that ghouls and ghosts will be out in full force to celebrate Halloween. In our house we have many traditions associated with the season. The last couple of years, that tradition has come to include making a few pieces of art to put in the Art of Horror show at the S.P.A.C.E gallery.  I love this show. It's gory, spooky and completely unconventional. Putting work in this show helps me to stretch my mind and challenges my personal notions and ideas. When I finish working on pieces for this show, I always feel recharged and inspired about making art again. 

Yesterday, I put up photos of Poor Dolly, this new piece was conceived in my head the same day, way back in July. The doll came from the same lot of dolls are the decaying baby and the sled was oddly paired in a lot with the domed box I transformed into her cradle (someone today called it her coffin, yikes...I guess it does look like one, doesn't it.)

There was something about the velvet red dress and the doll's startled expression that seemed to work with the faded, broken sled.  So, tonight, I committed to the piece, did some gluing and screwing and pulled the whole thing together...

It makes me think about Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome. about sledding down the hill as a child, even past dusk when my mother had already told me told me several times to come and that it was too dangerous to stay out in the bitter cold. What are the consequences of simple pleasures?  Where is the point where thrill turns to folly? turns to disaster? is a life lived entirely in the "safety zone" really lived? 

All these questions percolate to the front of my mind, when i think about this new piece. The only thing I can't think of, that i can't come to terms with is a name... maybe you can help me title it....

what should it be called?

New Work:

Untitled

Assemblage from found objects: sled, doll, prayer book, shoe, bonnet, ribbon

45"x19"x9"

New Work: Poor Dolly

Poor Dolly
Assemblage made from found objects: old domed box, doll, old photograph, silk flowers, child's shoe, fabric.
16"x 18 1/2"x6"


This doll shrine came together over the course of one night, although all the pieces were in my workroom for months. I found the the old dome box and the doll at an estate auction in July. I was so excited to put them together then. The doll fit perfectly into the box, like it was a cradle made just for her.  I don't know why it took me two months to actually glue and screw the piece together. I think I was having a little bit of a commitment issue. That's what I call it when you can see the piece in your head, you know you should do it, but you still walk around it and avoid finishing it. So tonight, the tienen duende, the chill in the air or the falling leaves, must have got to me, because the macabre creeped into the workroom and let me finish this piece. So much for the other things I had on the to do list....

She (the doll) reminds me of a time when I was young, probably around 4 years old. We were living upstate NY. My sister had a Mrs Beadsley doll. Christine was probably about 2 years old, and loved that thing to death. Some boys in the neighborhood, grabbed the doll from her and threw it over the fence into the "swamp:" A very wet wood area out back behind the housing development where we used to live.  Mrs Beadsley hung for months and months in a tree in the swamp, in a place where no one, in their right mind, would ever attempt to pull her out. So she decayed there, growing dirtier and dirtier, until finally one day she was gone. Probably her shirt had given way and she fell into the muck. Noone really knows what became of her.  Parts of her are probably there stil.


In part, this shrine is dedicated to all the things that are lost; the things we can never get back, to all the things that decay, only to reveal another of beauty underneath the paint and the gloss.