Collagitation now at the Bizarre Bazaar Shoppe!!

Recently I had the opportunity to consign 17 collages for sale in the Bizarre! Bazaar! Shoppe, located in the Most Wanted Fine Art Gallery satellite location at the Waterfront, in Homestead, PA. I first discovered BBS while delivering a painting for an Associated Artists of Pittsburgh group show at MWFA in June. I was so taken with the intriguing shop, I put together a little album of my own macabre art, showed it to the lovely Proprietress, who then  invited me to bring in some pieces to offer for sale there!

You can see some of my collages in the center image.

It was great to pull all that art out of plastic sleeves in binders, where most of it's been stored since 2010, and put it into frames (a process which is worthy of a blog post all its own. Why did I think I could mat and frame 12 pieces in one afternoon? Daft!)  Here are photos of some of the pieces in the shop:

Never Looked Better

Cadaveric

Mixed Anatomies (top), Masks (bottom)

My Dark Heart

Remorse (on easel)

Spiral Staircase (top) and Party Hat (below)

Grouping of the above, along with Death on the Wing (top left) and Aunt Letitia's Parlor (Tribute to Edward Gorey) (lower left)

If you're in Pittsburgh, please stop by the Waterfront in Homestead and take a look!  Most Wanted Fine Art (#9 on the directory map in the link) is located on Amity Square behind Leow's Theater, across from Starbuck's, next to the Gap. (Ironic, no?)

Bizarre! Bazaar! Shoppe is the brainchild of Dr. Morose and Miss Macabre, aka Nick Noir and Macabre "Mac" Noir. Artists, performers, entrepreneurs, magician, seer, they encompass a variety of talents, sensibilities, and knowledge both arcane and mundane, in their amazing personages. And they are really nice people!

Nick and Macabre Noir

Here are some other links to their worlds of mystery and decadent beauty:  Nick’s dark and delightful instagrams;  Mac’s instragrams.

Here are links to the original posts for some of the artworks at BBS (I've changed some of the titles):
http://collagitation.blogspot.com/2010/09/cadaveric.html
http://collagitation.blogspot.com/2010/08/collage-for-august-24-2010-mixed.html
http://collagitation.blogspot.com/2010/10/masks.html
http://collagitation.blogspot.com/2010/08/todays-collage-fatal-attraction.html
http://collagitation.blogspot.com/2010/08/collage-for-friday-august-20-strasbourg.html
http://collagitation.blogspot.com/2010/09/remorse.html
http://collagitation.blogspot.com/2010/09/death-on-wing.html
http://collagitation.blogspot.com/2010/10/victorian-parlor-tribute-to-edward.html
http://collagitation.blogspot.com/2010/08/collage-for-saturday-august-21-scream.html
http://collagitation.blogspot.com/2010/09/haunted-house-my-sisters-ghost.html

As you can gather from the name of the shop, Bizarre! Bazaar! caters to those with a darker sensibility. Capitalism with a twist! I’ve been interested since childhood in the macabre. Like my Mom, I loved ghost stories and scary movies. Still do. I’m also interested in the sinister aspects of history, art and literature and I thoroughly enjoy producing collages in that vein. Although my work isn’t all “dark,” a lot of it tilts in the direction of irreverence and irony. It’s a short slide down a slippery slope from that to outright tilted. So…why make “dark art”?

Dark art is, first of all, fantasy. Fantasy without the pink-tailed unicorns and glittering fairy-godmothers come to save the day, but like all fantasy, it is an escape from reality. It can also be an attempt to explain an indecipherable existence, or to build a safe space against an intolerable one. Or simply a way to amuse yourself. Or, perhaps it is just us trying to get comfortable with our own mortality.

Death can be a great enigma to us body-bound souls, lumbering about in our meat machines. (Are we driving it, or is it driving us?)  I guess we usually envisage departure from the meat machine as a traumatic experience, even though, "we" are not destroyed, only sent on to the next leg of the journey, or perhaps reunited with the Source. Yet death evokes all kinds of worrisome questions: Will it hurt? (I doubt if it will be comfortable, if only because the m.m. struggles against its demise.)  Will I go to Heaven?  (Only if you truly believe you will—click your ruby heels together and repeat three times…)   Will I see my departed Loved Ones? (I certainly hope so!) Will I meet the Grand Overall Designer?  (Not if you believe that’s some grouchy, white-bearded patriarch, sitting on a cloud smiting and smoting and generally behaving like a prick.)

Albus Dumbledore, revered by many of us, said:  “To a well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”  So why do we Fear Death?  Probably its simple fear of the unknown:  we can't know for sure what is really, REALLY going to happen beyond that portal. Some of us are comfortable with Mystery, others not so much (they have Religion, the great comfort blanket, instead.)

My very perceptive son recently commented that there are people who get psyched out by the realization that there is whole, working skeleton, right inside them, all the time! “Ewww, creeeeepy!!!”  So let us get used to the fact that we all carry our own creepiness within us. Putting it into artwork is, I think, preferable to letting it turn us into monsters (which, as we see every day on the news, Religion can certainly do.)

NOTE:  if you are the easily offended type, please disregard the parenthetical statements above. HA!!

Another individual revered by many of us, the inimitable Edward St. John Gorey, was asked by his long-time friend, Paul Theroux, (quoted in Theroux's excellent book, The Strange Case of Edward Gorey) why "stark violence and horror and terror were the uncompromising focus of his work." Gorey replied, “I write about everyday life.” In other words, being alive is not for the timid. Witness the Gashleycrumb Tinies! So we use dark art to help us cope, help us laugh--or at least grimly smile-- at the bigger Darkness ahead and within.

Speaking of Albus Dumbledore, I once took a “Sorting Hat test” years ago, on one of the many Harry Potter sites. It put me in Slytherin House. That explains a lot! I was not pleased at the time, but now I say, Wear Your Darkness Proudly!

There is darkness inside all of us…

We are what we are because of it, or perhaps in spite of it. 

Some use it as a shield to hide behind, others as an excuse to do unconscionable things. But, truly, the darkness is simply a piece of the whole, neither good nor evil unless you 

make it so.    

Jenna Maclaine, Bound By Sin

Autumn Dirge

I was too tired last night to finish the piece I'd started (which should give me a leg-up on tonight), so here is something I whipped up on Polyvore during lunch at work today.

Titanic

 

No Grey Area--Either you are, or you aren't!

Today, instead of returning to my job after a busy 4-day holiday, I ended up taking my mother to urgent care, who sent her to the emergency room. Fortunately, it was not a life-threatening situation, but one that was causing her considerable pain, most likely due to a huge arthritic flare up in her fingers. After 6 hours consisting of a few tests and a lot of waiting, we were no further ahead. They didn't know what it is, nor what she can do about it.   *sigh*

Meanwhile, this morning before getting out of bed, I listened to a story on NPR about the link between lack of sleep and obesity. Which would explain why my waistline has completely disappeared behind an exploding wall of fat over the past 5 months. I thought it was just old age creeping up on me. But, I hope I can mostly reverse this with adequate sleep and more exercise. The threat to my 3SIXTY5 project is problematic; I will try to repair my compromised health and continue with my collage-almost-every-day exercise. Can I simplify my work enough to manage it? Well, my self-imposed art challenge has become something of a life and death matter. And my goth-themed art continues...

Biological Clock

Halloween Treats

Please feel free to grab a handful of that Halloween candy you bought for the neighborhood kids, and munch down! Wait--it's only August, isn't it? Never mind--my macabre imagination generally kicks in about this time of year. Once it's dark by 9 PM, I dust off my broom. Mother Nature (aka, the Goddess) knew what she was about--we long for summer, yet we anticipate the cooling weather and moody skies of Autumn with a frisson of pleasure, as the heat of August drags on. And Halloween! Who could not love this shadow-laden  celebration? As with Mexico's Day of the Dead, here is a holiday where we flush away that fear of death and dread of evil, and embrace them instead. For how could we celebrate life, without occasionally taking off our hats (or putting them on) to death?  Dark is only the other side of light.  Would light matter if we never experienced the dark? So here's to the Dark--keeper of secrets, nest of conjugal coupling, bridge to our land of dreams. Or nightmares.

Today's Collage: Fatal Attraction

Death goes a-wooing. With the help of a beastly servant, known for its breath-taking embraces. Don't dally too long in his mesmerizing presence. Keep on climbing...

Back Online: 3SIXTY5 for August 9, 2010: MEMENTO MORI

This piece started out to be a Halloween design for Theme Thursday's challenge from last week. Then I had my little melt-down, resulting in no new art for 5 or 6 days. So I guess tonight's work has a potent message for me--Stop Wasting Tme!!! It's funny, if I look at this piece with my eyes kind of squinty, I see a skull with a little Santa Claus hat on. That's not so inappropriate for (lapsed) Catholic--in RC iconology of my era, it was all about suffering and death. The Babe in the manger, celebrated by Santa and his bag of gifts for all the world, in fact carried a destiny as dire as any. One of the most instructive books I've ever read about this theme--the god-man who sacrifices himself so that his people may survive--is Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces, which places the Christ story in the continuum of savior stories from way, way back. Informative, and liberating to those of us who have felt burdened by the weight of faith.

Well, I've wandered pretty far from my original purpose of making a simple Halloween design. Thus my Memento Mori (which means, in Latin, "Remember you will Die") is an appropriate reminder for me at this point in my journey. In spite of all our plans, dreams, and investments, life is transitory. But, this is no reason for despair. To paraphrase Dumbledore: to a right-thinking mind, death is but the next great adventure. Nevertheless, it's a scary thought to contemplate one's lone journey among the remote stars. Or not? I admit I am in no hurry to find out.

For Cinco de Mayo, a Shrine for Frida

To celebrate Cinco de Mayo, I made a shrine on Polyvore to honor my favorite Mexican personage, Frida Kahlo. I have never visited Mexico, but hope to some day, it is a beautiful country, and I want to visit Casa Azul, Frida's home. As with many other women artists the world over, I am fascinated by her art and life. Her dedication was awe-inspiring, as was her strength in the face of adversity. One of my favorite Frida books is the biography by Hayden Herrera, which I first read back in the '90s. The photo on the cover of the current edition is not of Frida herself, but of the actress Salma Hayek, who played her in Julie Taymor's biopic. How disrespectful!! Frida was cremated after her death, and the book tells that, when the corpse was wheeled into the crematorium, a blast of heat blew her into a sitting position and ignited her hair into a blazing halo. Frida's last bit of performance art! Well, maybe I should apologize for relating such a grisly story, but then, the Mexicans seem to be less intimidated by death than we are, so I don't think Frida would mind.