One-Girl Band with Floogle Horn Attachment

I was a one-girl band in the mid-1960s. My parents somehow procured an entire “band” which could be strapped to one’s chest and hung over shoulders. The front contained a washboard with a scrub brush, a floogle horn-type assemblage, lots of cymbals, , a bicycle horn, spoons and the rear assembly could be activated with a lever. I don’t remember what all was included, just how wonderful the entire ensemble sounded to my seven-year-old ears.

My daughter likes to remind me (as my mother once did) that I was born to entertain my parents. Being one of those late-in-life babies with a sister ten years my senior, my parents were post-war pleasant folks. We all know that every child has a different set of parents. Personalities and stress change over time. This is probably rarely more apparent than with my parents with me versus with my sister Ann. She born in Norfolk in 1943 in an Army hospital while my parents both served the US during WWII. Daddy worked over-seeing the loading of liberty ships while Mom worked for Army personnel, interviewing women who came to Virginia to work in the shipyards. I have a cassette tape right here in front of me – it contains about an hour of Mom talking about her WWII job as a civilian in the Army employ. Daddy wanted to volunteer but rejection followed his request due to asthma. He waited for the draft and entered the service within a few months of trying to get in on his own.

Ann – born in to the post-Pearl Harbor melee, delivered by Army docs home to the states for a brief respite from war-time duties. Me – born into an era of new promise and a world changed forever… a time of promise not fear.

Okay, to consider any era fearless could be fodder for criticism but in this discussion, it’s relevant to note the disparity between 1940s War and 1950s Peace. All communist-menace conspiracies aside, all socialist agendas removed, Korean conflict and the coming Viet Nam debacle put to the back of the queue for now. It’s a relative discussion – as in – compare 1954 housing boom to our Great Depression Economic Funk. By 1960s, we hid under our desks for tornado drills, not atomic bomb threats.

So of course my parents purchased a one-girl-band for me. Perhaps the assemblage set the tone for my life-long obsession with coupling disparate objects through unconventional means. My strange affection for re-direction of physical forms. Assemblagists, it seems, acquire their skills over decades of study… literal formations created by intense modification of original forms. Linear transformations derived from circular patterns create intellectual dialogs requiring physical transpositions of the viewer. Or patron. Or casual observer.

To observe art? Such action can be passive, aggressive, oblique – it is a determination to attach some reason or meaning to what is placed before the observer. Right? It appears that everyone tries to insert some level of understanding (or misunderstanding) to the object. What do you mean by that? What is the artist seeking to convey? Or is the artist conveying nothing, a Dada bit of misconstrued physical jargon?

It matters not.

Meanwhile, the one-girl-band – long discarded – lives on in my memory.

And I assemble whatever is at hand to create my own inner music.

Assemblage Art

What trips your trigger? For me, it’s abandoned metal, cracked and chipped paint on an old piece of wood, an old chest of drawers with the legs missing… rusted elements of some forgotten automobile.

I re-purpose discards and turn them into art. I assemble items someone left behind and create meaningful (?) dissonance. It’s a collage of three-dimensional proportions. Connected by wires, glue, screws, nails, string… more pieces of objects left behind.

It’s the ultimate form of recycling — turning man’s factory-produced detritus into art. It accentuates man’s ephemeral existence.

I shy away from plastic, though. It just doesn’t conform to my will. I suppose I could utilize techniques involving spray foam skins or melting but plastic just doesn’t do it for me. Metal, wood, paper… rock, stone, glass.

And buttons and clay.

The Sisters of the Inquisition

It’s getting close to finish time for the Sisters of the Inquisition. Problem right now is photography since the regular photos make the piece look pretty damn shabby. It’s outsider art. Painted on the back of a chair and on the side of a cuckoo clock, then fused. Think of the chair back as  an spread open wide “C” with the piece of cuckoo clock in the middle. Then there’s a golden baby without the top of its head and a hollow body. There will be  a bouquet made out of oddities–constructed with copper wire as the stems. The golden baby will be a “vase” for the bouquet. The “baby” came from Piggly Wiggly on River Road years ago. When the bakery was closing down, I bought a bag of small pink plastic babies. They were originally intended as cake decorations for a baby shower or new baby cake. I loved my bag o’babies and it was hard to break up the flock, or herd, or … a bag o’babies would be a “jumble of babies” – that’s what it is, babies in a large group would be called a “jumble”. Which transcends a murder of crows.

Mayflies hatching on an open fire…

Jack dogs nipping at your nose. Tiny sluts with their flies all aglow…

Truly, ya’ll, the Mayflies hatched in a superb fashion after the last rain shower. Gabillions of them, swarming the back porch – they get into your eyes, hair, *gag me* mouth and if you don’t know Mayflies, you don’t know Nymphs. They are so tragic, a gentle breeze can slap them into a tree trunk and kill them dead.

But the most amazing fact – just come upon by yours dearly – is the scientific name for the little nymph darlings!

Ephemera varia. oh wait, the capitals are for emphasis. Let’s do this correctly: Ephemera varia .
I must create an assemblage art piece incorporating this incredible new knowledge.

Oh, thou trout spine, hast thy seen thee?
Get me to a portlet, my varia sprucemate.
Thy Mayfly doth cease me further,
vex me no more.
–Dr. Curtis Moray Vander Blinkertoon

Yes, Virginia, there is an Assemblagist.

This new website is kicking my Ass -emblage capabilities. The 600×200 graphics aren’t loading correctly [this is where we serve the wine] and the thumbnails refuse to submit to their 120×120 requirements [bring in the small platter of brie] … to submit my taxied brain to further degradation, the template is fubarred by my constant incorrect line-edit manipulation. I shall retire to my dressing place and contemplate the universal roundhouse wherein my mental train resides. Hand me those Ritz crackers, please.

Perhaps it is time to call Spencer Montgomery.