Part 4: If you save it long enough you might use it in a collage

Scraps old and new have ended up in the Layout Scrapbook.  As an artist, people give me things I might use, and a collection of metro tickets from around the world finally gets used.  

If you give me a box of Niederegger Marzipan, I’ll be sure to recycle the foil wrappers.  The remains of a copy of Avant Garde, a short-lived magazine from the 1960s, are in the book after lingering in the family’s attic for decades).  

Go through boxes and find photos of young cousins eating ice cream (he now has five of his own children).  The polka twins are really one young lad who is now becoming a star down in Los Angeles and that punk with the goats is still rocking up in Portland.  You will never forget a trip to Mexico when you think about dairy products and Supradol (the best name ever for a painkiller).  

On the back cover of the book we get an illustration of Allen Hurlburt himself.  And finally, honk if you know Ken Budka.

Old Magazines in the Attic

Dad’s Hidden Marilyns, 10”x10”, mixed media, collage on board

A few years ago, I was helping my mom sort through 35 years of stuff in the attic.   There were a few boxes that had been left unpacked, and probably unopened, since we moved into the house back in the 1970s.  Among the boxes was one full of magazines saved by my dad since the 1960s.  No, this is not the predictable Playboys-in-the-attic trope.  I think that only happens in the movies.  What I did find was a stack of a magazine called Avant Garde.  The one issue revealed Marilyn Monroe images in vibrant, neon colors.  Visions of Warhol danced in my head for a brief moment.  But what I had was an issue with manipulated photos by the photographer Bert Stern. 

On the off chance these were highly collectable (i.e., valuable) I did some online research.  You can readily find back issues that are affordable as well as expensively priced ones by delusional eBay sellers.  On etsy someone has taken to disassembling copies of the magazine and selling the individual pages as prints – well, good for them.

Confident that this tattered old magazine was neither rare nor particularly valuable, you know what happens.  As I have spent the better part of 2017 exploring the relationship between color and memory, these glowing pages from the 1960s were exactly what I was looking for collage material to capture that day-glo era.

Fall Back - November Mail Art

While I was busy in Sacramento installing the Pink Mail Art show, many of you were making and mailing some fun things to me.  The recent arrivals include:

1. A new Styrofoam print from Kerosene (aka Carolyn Oord) in Québec.
2. Some Marilyn Mail from the Cracker Jack Kid in New Hampshire.
3. A new Giant Ice Cream sign from Fleur Helsingor in Oakland (I think I need to check that place out).
4. A second piece of mail art from Hilal Turşoluk in Turkey.
5. Some Halloween/Day of the Dead fun from Monica Lee.
6. Some ghosty mail art from Barbara Stasiowski.

Thanks everyone.  Now I need to get back to working on the next batch to send out.