Lots of boxes 1

My new show consists of several "collections" of collage and assemblage, fancy words for putting a variety of miscellaneous junk together and calling it art.   I've been drawn to this form of art for a long time; maybe it started as a way to rationalize keeping boxes and boxes and piles and piles of miscellaneous junk instead of throwing it out.  But I have learned that miscellaneous stuff, no matter how appealing each piece may be when scrutinized closely, doesn't become art until you have a good way to fasten it together forever.

And for me, the go-to answer has always been to put the disparate parts into boxes.  

I have been doing this for several years, mostly using pre-made new wood boxes that you get at the craft store, and several of those boxes made it into my gallery show.  But the project got turbocharged when Pamela Mattei, a long-time fiber pal, was seized by the desire to clean out her garage and basement during early pandemic lockdown.  Early last summer she gave me five huge cartons of old cigar boxes, which I immediately started filling up for art.

Some of the boxes had slide-off lids, which I slid off to use for other purposes, leaving me with six-inch cubes to wallpaper with maps, photos, book pages, sheet music, fabric or other flat stuff.  Then I populated the boxes with things that wanted to be together.

Here are some of the cigar-box cubes that made it into the show:

Pink Specs Box

Bingo Berry Box

Some of the cigar boxes were hinged, and I took them apart to give more five-sided "rooms."

Trio Box

I'll show you more of my boxes in other posts.  Meanwhile, if you're near Louisville, I hope you can drop in and see my show at PYRO Gallery, 1006 E. Washington St.  Gallery hours are noon to 6 Fridays and Saturdays, 1-4 Sundays through the end of May, and by private appointment. 

Thinking inside the box 2

I told you about the great windfall of wooden cigar boxes that I am now using for art.  Here are photos of some of them.  Many of the the raw materials that are going into the boxes reflect recurring interests of mine -- maps, glasses, old photos, circuit boards, rusty washers and other tools -- making the task easier because those are the materials already sitting out in piles in my studio.

I don't have a sentimental attachment to bingo, but I had a bunch of vintage cards sitting around that were exactly the right width to fit into these two boxes...

The hidden parts of a piano key.  (Tricky to make a non-rectangular box stand upright.)

A slinky and a mirrored sunglass lens.

The back cover of a library book, complete with sign-out card.

The pencils are suspended in a lacing of waxed linen cord.

Maps and old photos (I don't know if this one is finished yet)

Auditioning

Auditioning

Phone call from heaven

I didn't actually get a phone call from heaven, as I suggested in my post last week, I got one from my art pal Pamela, who has been using her lockdown to clean out the garage and basement.  She wondered whether I would like to have some cigar boxes.  Wood or cardboard? I asked.  Both, she said.  How many are we talking about?  A lot, she said, and if I took the whole bunch she would even deliver them to my doorstep.

And so I am now the proud owner of four huge boxes of boxes.

Some of the wooden boxes are deep, with tops that slide out from grooves:

Some are shallow, with hinged tops:

Some of the boxes are varnished and others are unfinished.  I tend to like the unfinished ones better, and I wish the varnished ones had been finished with a little bit more care, but have been using both of them. 

I have been taking the slide-out tops away for use in separate pieces.  Once you saw off the tabs that slide into the grooves, they make nice little supports for collage.

I've been working on several of these boxes at the same time, for efficiency.  While the glue dries on one (here, weighted down with heavy bottles)...

...I can proceed on another.  I've finished seven boxes so far, I think, with three or four more in process.  I'll show you the finished ones in subsequent posts.

Meanwhile, THANK YOU, Pamela!  I know you didn't call from heaven, but you are certainly an angel to give me this fabulous trove of art materials!

Thinking inside the box 1

For years and years I have been enthralled by Joseph Cornell's mysterious box assemblages.  One of my large art regrets is that two days before I was due to go to Washington DC for a big Cornell show at the Smithsonian in 2007, my father died and I figured I'd probably better go to the funeral instead.  Several years ago I made some box assemblages of my own using blank wood boxes from the craft store, but it's been my intention all along to work with used/repurposed boxes instead.

Earlier in the pandemic lockdown I pulled out a couple of old boxes that I had been collecting and worked assemblage upon them.  It has been joy to root around in my lifetime supply of stuff and junk and find just the perfect bit for this or that construction.  And pleasant surprise to occasionally be able to recall exactly where that perfect piece of junk came from!

For instance, this box features a piece of transparent plastic that once protected the keypad in a pay telephone (raise hands, all those old enough to remember pay phones!!).  I found it while walking on Trevilian Way just west of Newburg Road, on the north side of the street right where the road goes into a tight S-bend.  I know the location doesn't mean anything to you, but I recite it to prove how vivid the memory, going on twenty years ago!  My first repurpose of this piece of plastic was as a resist for spraying bleach onto fabric, and because the pattern was so obviously from a telephone (at least to us old people) I titled one of the quilts "Double Talk."  Then I stopped spraying bleach onto things, but of course held onto the plastic until its second repurpose in this box.

Here's another box, which I think originally held two decks of cards.  About ten years ago when I was in my teabag phase, I carefully covered the box with old printed materials behind a layer of stained teabag. 

But as you can see, the box sat on a little pedestal or dais, so when displayed vertically it wouldn't stand up properly.  It took me ten years to solve that problem, by cutting up a ruler to prop up the front end of the box.  I am sorry to say that I don't remember where I got a whole bag full of old rubber stamps, which I suspect are going to show up in more boxes.

I had already started work on these boxes when I received a phone call from heaven that changed the whole course of this project.  I'll tell you more in a later post.