“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.

The figure here looks like it is separated from the “background.” With the exception of a few cotton ball wrappers, linking them together. Usually I integrate the so-called background and foreground in collage, painting or drawing, making it one piece.

“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.

Sea gulls. I had no reason for putting one in my collage at the time. But looking at the collage now, it reminds me of those wonderful days at the beach. Disrupted only when I would have a picnic with friends and seagulls would be swarming overhead, squawking and circling, ready to dive-bomb our lunch.

“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.

One of my drawing teachers in art school told us to turn our papers upside down to check the composition of a drawing. Or to look in a mirror, holding the piece. That this would help us see what was needed to make the drawing work. Of course, we would turn it right side up to finish and present it for criticism.

Well, the piece shown above was framed wrong. It was framed not upside down but rotated to one side. I decided to leave it that way. And to continue on. After all, if the composition is sound, it works. Right? Maybe not as well as it would have. But as I said, I have to move on.

“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.

At this point, in my making of 100 collages, I was getting a little silly. A tiger dragging a shark out of the water? Confidently silly. Cats with fish in their mouths; Why can’t a tiger do the same with one of its own size?

Punchy, at this point, I had only ten to go, and I was really tired and under deadline. After all, the edges had to be painted (three coats of white), the pieces taken to the framer, the photographer to photograph them. Everything, in a series of 100. counting and counting them again. Endlessly counting them. Storing them, moving them on hand trucks in boxes, ten to a box, with each wrapped in bubble wrap. Unwrapping each time, for each procedure.

The photographer, Tom Meyer, who, by the way, did an excellent job, told me the hardest part of photographing these collages, was the wrapping and unwrapping of the bubble wrap. Tom returned some to me wrapped with bandaids. I never asked why. He had a hard enough time with my masking tape sticking and tearing the bubble wrap.

“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.

“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.

This image is one of which I am fond. I don’t think many people gravitate towards it, because it is subtle. Also it has a lot going on. I just sold a few more of these in this series. As the buyers browse my collage “book” (the collages in print form), they tend to bypass this one.

Among others, they are attracted to the one of the ballet dancer, dancing on top of the water. One buyer in particular, is a doctor treating people with terminal illness. She said, although she really liked that one, that purchasing it would not be good for her patients because the water indicates danger, even though the dancer is “rising above” it.

I did not assemble these collages for a certain audience. I did them by the standards of what I feel is good art. If people like them and want to buy them, it is wonderful and affirming of my standards. But if they don’t purchase them, and some are left over, I have them to remind me of the process, which to me is the most important.

“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.

“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.

Explosions. I like them. Only visually, mind you. I don’t like the destruction. I like the puffiness of them, the force, the way they can interject a lovely cloud into a piece. Again, the juxtaposition of a vacant auditorium with surprise.

As Karen Tauches, a curator, art critic and artist in Atlanta once said, natural disaster is part of my aesthetic. This, if you have to assign meaning to it, could be an accident in an adjacent chemical lab.

“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.

“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.