untitled January 2006 assemblage painting by Lady K. 7″ x 5″ - foto by Smith

“The cat can pet the blues away, the purr in fur unfrown.”

I was brooding and pet the cat and immediately felt better and that sentence suddenly popped into my brain straight from the WordLand Express.

When I was little, my mother told me not to go into the Words by myself because I might get lost. Looks like she was right.

Found these three collages in a plastic garbage bag in a closet. It’s weird — I’ve been looking for these for almost a year now, and it was a delight to pick up a garbage bag, wonder what’s in it, and find our missing art. Must have got lost when we moved in 11 months ago.

Top foto is one of Lady’s first assemblages, done early 2006 in Cleveland. The next she created in Croatia late 2006. Bottom collage I did in Croatia and titled The Rise of the Novel, then totally redid in France and retitled The Coca-Cola Wars.

untitled December 2006 assemblage painting by Lady K, 5″ x 6″ - foto by Smith

The Coca-Cola Wars, 2007, 7″ x 9″ - collage & foto by Smith

When I say I redid my Croatian piece in France, you’ll know why when you glance below and see what it looked like as The Rise of the Novel. Sometimes with collage assemblage paintings, you just go wrong, and this went very very wrong. I’m surprised it cleaned up so well.

The Rise of the Novel, 2006, 7″ x 9″ - collage & foto by Smith

Jeff Chiplis found neon sculpture
in upcoming Butler Institute of Art solo exhibit - foto by Smith

We watched Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland yesterday in 3-D. The 3-D was nicely done, but the movie itself is all art, no heart; a big hole rather than a bright whole; eye candy, so best not keep your mind handy.

This is the first Tim Burton movie I’ve not enjoyed. Failed movies drain my psyche rather than invigorate my spirit.

The problem with 3-D is the glasses are dark and greatly dim the color and experience. We saw Avatar in 2-D after we watched it in 3-D just to compare, and the color loss is vast.

On a much brighter note, one more spiritually joyful, I spent a day down at the Butler Institute of Art with found-neon artist Jeff Chiplis helping install his upcoming solo show Neon Works in the 21st Century. (I’ll blog the date of the show once I again find out)

I interspersed helping Jeff with walking around the museum seeing the usual so-so art art museums seem to love mixed in with a selection of visually and mentally interesting pieces. I’ve seen so much art in my 46 years in the art world that the run-of-the-mill stuff just bores me at this point and it takes something a little extra to thrill me these days. Plus just like any other art, 99% of what one sees or reads or hears or tastes is throw-away while less than 1% zings the mind the eyes the heart. This is especially true of poetry readings where even my 1% quality estimate might be optimistic. (I mourn the loss of poetry in current poetry — most “poets” write and read their diary entries or daily descriptions of their mundanity and lists of their gripes and whines.)

Here are a few shots of Jeff Chiplis’ solo art show in the making. I’ll try to get down to the opening to shoot the whole show. Jeff is one of my 13 guest artists I’ve put up on AgentOfChaos.com. You can see a slew of his previous work at www.agentofchaos.com/chiplis/index.html. I’ll be adding dozens of fotos of the show to his AoC site.

As you can see, a Chiplis found neon show is a joyous explosion of color and form. One’s spirits rise just walking into the room.

* Disclosure - some of these are very odd shots of his work and give you absolutely no idea what the piece/s look like, but they do make for dramatic shots . . . this shows more how I look at shows rather than what shows look like.

Jeff Chiplis found neon sculptures
in upcoming Butler Institute of Art solo exhibit - fotos by Smith

Page 50 & inside back cover of just-completed Reset - collages & fotos by Smith

I finished the final two collages of Portable Crime Scene #1: Reset. Going to miss its nightly creative companionship - these 54 collages have dominated my last 19 days.

This final two-page spread is my signature in that the word “Smith” appears 12 times across the two pages.

The two yellow goats are from a Gauguin show that was at the Cleveland Museum of Art. In the last room of the show they had ink pads and stamps featuring various elements of his paintings so we could create our own Gauguin.

The newspaper paragraph that’s too small and yellowed to read reads:

Instead, Harris quotes Smith as say-
ing he was led by an “old spirit” who
“transfigured himself from a white
salamander in the bottom of a hole.”
The letter also says Smith used an
enchanted stone to look into the future

Now before I begin volume 2, I’ll finish getting Criminal - A True Tale of Armed Robbery, Stolen Cars, Alternative Art, Mainstream Poetry, Underground Publishing, Robbing The Cradle, and Leaving the Country ready for another round of shopping around to literary agents. We have a great story here, and the world’s indifference is frustrating. But at least we wrote the bloody thing. If we don’t get a nibble from the publishing industry over the next 12 months, we’ll publish it ourselves through Lulu.com.

Pages 50 & inside back cover of just-completed Reset - collages & fotos by Smith

Pages 48 & 49 of work-in-process Reset - collages & fotos by Smith

Laid these two collages out last night but didn’t glue them down because there are only four blank pages left to fill and these two didn’t seem worthy to be part of the final four. But they’d be fine if they weren’t in the last quartet, so I’ve decided not to be intimidated by quality or my own standards and publish them anyway. After all, this is America where everyone but me watches American Idolatry and Scumvivor, so quality is obviously not a factor.

Spent yesterday down at the Butler Institute of Art in Youngstown helping Jeff Chiplis install an exhibition of his found neon sculptures. I’ll blog some of the fotos as soon as I finish and blog the final two collages.

Had an odd thought last night — what if my visual dizzy spells are glimpses into reality instead of glitches in reality?

Pages 48 & 49 of work-in-process Reset - collages & fotos by Smith

Pages 42 & 43 of work-in-process Reset - collages & fotos by Smith

Did six more collages last night — that leaves only four more blank pages to fill of the 54. This nightly collaging of one to six collages has become addictive. The two nights I couldn’t work due to friends and poetry left me a little unsettled because I didn’t get my nightly collage fix. when I finish the final four, probably tonight, I’m going to experience withdrawal because I have to take some time off to finish Criminal and I have to find more books and magazines to cut up before I start on book two.

My Chicago paper-making artist friend suggested I should title the book of collages Portable Crime Scene — since I’ll be doing several books, think I’ll call them all that: this first one will be Portable Crime Scene Vol I - Reset. I’ll become a cultural franchise just like CSI.

Lady and I drove to Toledo to be two of three featured readers at Tuesdays Collingwood Arts Center poetry reading hosted by poets Michael Grover and John Dorsey. Poets are an odd lot - we drove two hours there and two hours back so we could each read 20 minutes of poetry. And no money involved, except for money going out along the way for gas and food — although Michael did buy one of my books, I suspect out of charity so we wouldn’t go home empty-handed.

Except it’s never empty-handed when one gets to read to a new audience. We read from a stage in an old fashioned theater with plush seats and a balcony.

I think I gave my best reading ever - finally comfortable enough with myself and the words to let them slow down, give them some room, and the occasional verbal oomph when needed. Finally have my mojo back, and then some. It was taped so may appear on the internet at some point.

Pages 44 & 45 of work-in-process Reset - collages & fotos by Smith

The internet - sometimes it seems it’s basically programmable interactive TV for one on a laptop, a small screen for a small audience for small bucks.

Anyway for big bucks, here are the top 10 TV shows that bring in the most advertising money per half hour. These ten shows rake in 31.88 million dollars each 30 minutes of programming, or 1.063 million dollars per minute of broadcasting — more than most the world’s citizens will make in their life time.

We watched the first episode of Lost on Hulu.com last month to see what all the fuss was about and decided we didn’t need to continue. I’ve missed every episode of other shows on the, although I did watch the first two V mini-series, thought the first one fairly decent, the second weak.

We still have no TV. Last TV I had was mom’s and when she died in 2005 I gave it away.

01 - American Idol - makes $8.1 million every 30 minutes
02 - Two and a Half Men - $3.1 million per 30 minutes
03 - 24 - $3 million per 30 minutes
04 - Grey’s Anatomy - $2.8 million per 30 minutes
05 - V - $2.8 million per 30 minutes
06 - Desperate Housewives - $2.7 million per 30 minutes
07 - Dancing with the Stars - $2.56 million per 30 minutes
08 - Lost - $2.53 million per 30 minutes
09 - Survivor - $2.22 million per 30 minutes
10 - CSI - makes $2.07 million per 30 minutes.

list from
huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/the-10-most-lucrative-sho_n_493745.html

Pages 46 & 47 of work-in-process Reset - collages & fotos by Smith

pages 38-39 of work-in-progress Reset - collages & fotos by Smith

44 collages done, only 10 left to do before the book is filled up. Going to take some time off when I’m done because these have obsessed me and I’ve gotten no other work done. Think I’ll finish the final clean-up of Criminal - A true story of armed robberies, stolen cars, alternative art, mainstream poetry, underground publishing, robbing the cradle, and leaving the country and get some letters out to literary agents before I start the next book.

Lady says the collages are getting better as I go along. These 44 so far are an interesting mix of contradictions — text and images, color and black & white, intricately cut-out and crudely chopped, positive and negative, beautiful and ugly, funny and serious, created and actual. It’s not easy to interweave such separate visual philosophies into cohesive wholes.

My poet brother-in-law asked if there were any theme to all the collages. Had to say not really. I cut out and use anything that appears anti-establishment, concerns moral and spiritual growth, is odd, surreal or absurd, is especially beautiful or shocking — perhaps I’m nibbling at the extremes, use anything that tickles the mind, the heart, the spirit, the soul, that nudges them onto a better, wiser, more moral path. And of course anything that insults Republicans — although how does one actually insult a group of people with no morals, no conscience, no good, no honor, who worship nothing except greed, power and bigotry.

Anyway, 44 created in 13 days works out to 3.4 collages per day. Me the output king of Cleveland.

pages 40-41 of work-in-progress Reset - collages & fotos by Smith

pages 36-37 of work-in-progress Reset - collages & fotos by Smith

Synchronicity — sometimes the lines are woven so cleverly, it’s got to be a clue.

A friend and I jam a couple times a month — my words, his music, me not knowing what he will play, he not knowing what I will say.

Yesterday as Lady and I were leaving the Great Satan Wal-Mart, Lady glanced over and saw my friend sitting with some store managers. We went over to say hi and saw blood flowing down his face, a woman holding bloody napkins to his head.

The area where they keep the store shopping carts was empty, so our friend stooped down to reach through the low under-hang to grab a cart and either didn’t duck enough or stood up too soon and put a serious gash in his scalp — over two inches long and deep enough to unsettle me, and I’ve had many a deep cut.

So Lady drove the car home and I rode with him to the emergency room. The ambulance guys, the check-in folk, the nurses, resident and doctor were all friendly and helpful, and the whole process only took about three hours (it could have been much much worse).

I didn’t actually do anything except hang around to give a friend someone to talk to and pass the time, but I felt useful, that I was doing something decent outside myself. We drove him back to the store afterward to get his car and followed him home just to be sure.

It made me wonder - what’s the chance of a friend needing a friend in a random store and for that friend to walk by by chance just at that time? I’m a totally free will kind of guy, but sometimes things are so intricately interwoven you have to wonder about fate, destiny, the fact that we and it and everything are all tied together in an intricity of chance, dance and romance.

The remarkable portion of this was an older black woman saw this happen and rushed over to help him immediately. She walked him inside the store, held napkins to his bloody head as she chastised the store for causing the injury. She stayed with him until the ambulance came, and gave us her name and number so he can follow up and recover the time and money he lost due to the store’s negligence.

A further note - the store employees were all helpful, kind, interested in hearing what had gone wrong, and never showed any evidence of annoyance or trying to avoid their responsibility. Of course now their lawyers will take over and all the good may go out the window. But for a few hours, something bad that could have been much worse was made tolerable by a lot of basically decent human beings acting together rather than separately.

Sometimes things flow. I’ll have to blog about some of the angels who appeared from nowhere to help Lady and me in our various travels and then disappeared.

After all this, we drove out to my mother-in-law’s 60th birthday dinner celebration where I ate good food in a fancy restaurant and watched the other nine guests drink copious amounts of seriously expensive alcohol. Then after dinner I got stoned so I could play too. It’s still somewhat odd to think that my 60 year old mom-in-law is four years younger than I am . . . my father-in-law is five years younger . . . her three brothers are 34, 36 and 38 years younger . . . in fact, her 84 year old granny is only 20 years older than I am - maybe I should be dating her.

page 38 of work-in-progress Reset - collages & fotos by Smith

pages 32-33 of work-in-progress Reset- collages & fotos by Smith

I keep giving openings to the Fool Killer and the Dork Patrol - last night I accidentally did two collages upside down in my sketch book - pages 1-31 right side up, 32-33 upside down, 34-35 right side up again. Oddly enough I didn’t get upset with my stupidity - it’s just a book and folk can turn it upside down for two pages, give em some physical and mental exercise — maybe I can market it as an exercise book.

Found a reflection of my life philosophy in a game of Solitaire. The cards were looking bad, going nowhere, and a little voice within said “it’s only a game, kill this one and start anew.” But I kept on, I endured, held on long enough that a single card play turned over another card which lead to several more and wham bam cascading damn the game was done and I had won.

In life I expect shit, failure, missed connections, misread signs, misunderstood words — but while expecting this worst, I keep hoping for the best. And it’s surprising and amazing how often I get the good.

My motto’s probably Endure and Ensure; endure the shit, ensure survival for another day of endurance.

pages 34-35 of work-in-progress Reset- collages & fotos by Smith

page 22-23, 24-25, 26-27 spread of work-in-progress Reset - collages & fotos by Smith

Lady looked at my cut-out collage stash and said that I cut out symbol, meaning, metaphor while she goes for color, beauty and composition. And she is exactly right. She could add I also go for the absurd, the surreal, education, and anything anti-establishment as well.

Anyway, here are yesterday’s six collages. That makes 30 small collages past eleven days, 24 to go. The remaining collages will take more time because I’m getting low on collage stash. It seems I need 20-30 potential pieces of paper for every image I use — and that is seriously heavy front-end search / research time. Plus my creative brain has used up most its joy juice, need time to rethink, resee, recharge.

pages 22 - 27 of work-in-progress Reset- collages & fotos by Smith