No. 38 – Collage to the Rescue

...and The One Indiscriminate, redux

Mar 28, 2021

*Joan*, 2021, collage and acrylic paint on cradle board, 20X24 inches.

I hit a wall with my Life’s Work project—my visual memoir about my mother’s dementia and my difficulties with caretaking—and was forced to take a collage break. That’s not a bad thing… no, it’s very good in fact. I was forcing my way through a thick wall of psychic mud—working on a graphic-memoir-style sequence called How to Stay Safe as a Child about coping mechanisms that kids in “dysfunctional” homes often have—and feeling more despondent by the minute. I pushed on because I’d lost two months of precious work time what with Christmas and fracturing my ankle, and I have a show in the fall at The Victoria Arts Council that I’m working towards. I was hell-bent on re-immersing myself in what I’d been doing before Christmas. But I wasn’t “listening”…I was trying to force a square peg into a round hole, or so it began to feel. Now that I have finally stepped away from what I was mindlessly trying to force, I see that a break is precisely what I need in order to gain some clarity around the project.

What a relief.

Stop and listen, dummy!

Collage is the perfect antidote to psychic mud shoving. Spontaneous, stress-free, FUN even! Remember fun? (No, me neither). Leafing through the collage materials I may or may not use, my brain is making free associations between items that *could* go together, should I choose. My choices may not make sense in the typical sense of the word, but I trust my inclinations. There isn’t the pressure to be perfect that I tend to have with painting… I just do whatever the hell I feel like. Sometimes hilarity ensues. And that feels GOOD.

I started doing collage when I left art school 30 years ago, and stuck with it because I had no studio and it takes very little space or set-up. I *think* this is the first collage I did in that era:

The background paper has faded—it was once a vivid blue—and you can see remnants of glue behind some of the figures and behind the skeleton’s leg. I’ve tightened up my methodology since then! And learned a lot about materials… not least because I worked in an art supply store for 17 years.

All this collage talk reminds me that last summer I started working on a collage tutorial video, which I’m fired up about again and might just finish during this break period. I have the entire thing planned out from set-up, supplies and collage materials to technique, composition, troubleshooting and special tips. Stay tuned, please!

*Montana*, 2021, collage and acrylic paint on cradle board, 14X18 inches

To see more of my collage work, kindly look here.

The following section is a post from May 2018 called The One Indiscriminate that I feel moved to bring to light again. It’s possible that this was the beginning of my Life’s Work project, though I didn’t know it at the time.

My mother was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia in the fall of 2012—living at home (with in-home care) for the next two years, then spending the last two years of her life in a care home. This diagnosis was unprecedented in our family—my grandmother had a mind like a steel trap—so there was a lot of shock and awe on my part before the 4 years was over. I realize now that half the people in this town (if not more) have intimate knowledge of dementia and its particular rude surprises: these include both the traumatic emotional aspects of watching your family member disintegrate before your eyes, and negotiating the Kafkaesque "system" that can only be learned and mapped by dealing with each new crisis that comes your way. It's a voyage of horrifying discovery.

Lewy Body dementia differs from Alzheimers in that it involves hallucinations, certain characteristics of which are shared by the people who suffer from it. My mother saw people with cardboard faces and squarish features, wearing suits made of oatmeal or cottage cheese. Those were the adults, and they were larger than human size. The children were different— they would create their own bodies by stealing rungs from a chair to use as their legs, and maybe stealing someone’s sweater to make up their upper torso. They would also apparently steal food, money, and my mother’s house keys, as well as let the cat and dog out the back door when she wasn’t looking. My mother would also see faces coming out of the floor, or grass growing from her hand. She apparently had a three-day tryst with her doctor and his wife; at the care home she slept with "an eight-foot virgin" and regularly had children jumping from her window. To name but a few of the visions she shared with us.

Amazingly, my mother kept her sense of humour until very close to the end. Once, on leaving a musical performance she was watching in the care home where she lived, she shook her head and said to us, 'I had ONE indiscriminate in my life, and he's sitting right beside me!". I knew what she meant—she meant "indiscretion"—and she was referring to the elderly man seated beside her during the performance. When we reached her room, she was still shaking her head about it. "I've had sex ONCE in my life... and he had to be sitting right beside me!" My mother has two children, so my husband David felt it safe to say, "I think you've had sex more than once...". She laughed. It was always sweet relief when she laughed.

It's been 15 months since my mother died, and I think I'm starting to relax. All told it was a 5-year period of repeated stress, trauma, and sorrow. Painful and horrendous as it was, I see now that I was privileged to experience it, and to be able to help my mother. Not that I want to go through it again anytime soon! And not that I welcomed it. But I can't regret it. That would be like regretting life.

And now I feel moved to post the last panel from the graphic memoir piece More! Tales of Dementia because it seems a fitting punctuation to the paintings and writing above.

Installment No. 2 of THE ANONYMOUS DOODLES

When my daughter was growing up, I worked for many years at a local art supply store called Island Blue Print Co. Back in the day there would be a medley of small pads of paper left on the counters for people to try out the pens on, and I got into the habit of spiriting away the doodles I found worthy. The images below are found art from 1997 – 2005. I’ll keep them coming in future FTM installments.

Last but not least… Happy Anniversary to ME! Or more precisely, to Feed the Monster, which I have now been producing monthly for three years. Voilà the first official FTM post: 2018 Saw the Birth of My New Studio, from April 2nd of that year. I had a new backyard studio and was struggling to feel worthy of this designated, magical, sacred space. NO PRESSURE.

I did eventually settle in, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been road bumps, and plenty of them. I continue to follow my nose… that’s all I can do.

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