Chairs

Rancho de la Luna Chairs Series, reverse collage, mixed media on plexi, 5”x5” each

Recently I got a look at the Richard Diebenkorn exhibit at the de Young.  One of the things I was reminded of is the way many of the Bay Area Figurative Painters often included and mastered chairs in their work.  I think it was probably Elmer Bischoff that taught me to love paintings of chairs.  Ironically, I eventually worked for years in the world of interior design and custom furniture – yes, it was all about chairs.  Even earlier in San Francisco, when I was trapped in an office, one of the bright spots was working for an art collector and, as boring as my day could be, I got to sit next to a big portrait of a chair by Raimonds Staprans.  That chair kept me sane.

Inevitably I would have to paint some chairs myself.  These four little chairs were painted onto the backs of plexiglas as part of a series of reverse collages.  The chairs were all done at a friend’s home known as the Rancho de la Luna in Joshua Tree, California.  The pieces are 15 years old now, but they remain some of my personal favorites.

La Luna

La Luna, mixed media, reverse collage on plexi, 6”x6”

The effects of last weekend’s annular eclipse still have not worn off.   Going up to the nearly empty shore of Pyramid Lake in the Nevada desert was the perfect place for the event.   Yesterday I was sorting out some of my older work and came across La Luna — one of my reverse collages from an earlier series.  Appropriately there is a little bit of Yma Sumac embedded in the collage.  No desert road trip is complete without Yma.

Have I Invented a Glue?

This all started with a visit to SCRAP back in 1997. Among the treasures in my bag was a piece of Plexiglas. I decided to play around with it and started by doing a collage front-to-back so the final piece had this embedded feel. Typically collage is all about building from the back to the front, layers on top of layers. I was reversing the process. When one paints and collages on Plexiglas or regular glass it goes front-to-back. The mixed media process was a fusion of Victorian glass painting and collage. I called it Reverse Collage.

That one experiment with Plexiglas led to a whole series of work. It included over 100 reverse collages. Most were small, 6”x6” and usually installed in a grid pattern. They were shown in a few galleries, sold many of them and I even did a demonstration at the de Young Museum as part of an artist in residence series.

Okay, I confess, I do google myself. It’s interesting to see who is linking to my website and where I am turning up. About 10 years back I started coming across a few word origin websites that credited me with inventing the term Reverse Collage. I was bemused and a bit flattered. Now, when you google Reverse Collage, I still come up. But it seems the idea has spread through the world of crafters. There are websites, youtube videos and instructions all over how to do reverse collages. But wait, there’s more…..

Last week I came across a product called Reverse Collage Glue from a craft supply company called Aleene’s. I was simply amused. What an unnecessary product. Any clear drying glue will work just fine, products like Golden Medium or GAC or even plain old Elmer’s.

As the “inventor” of Reverse Collage I can say there is no need for any special glue.