The Assemblagist

I am stymied in my 200 artist book man­u­fac­ture. The first 35 went quickly into pro­duc­tion and I uti­lized E6000 glue to cre­ate the spine. E6000 will secure a live chicken to the bumper of a Volvo. But now the book cov­ers will be com­prised of match­book cov­ers and I need small, ever so tiny, sta­ples to secure the spines. Sta­pled Spines. Sounds like a punk rock group, doesn’t it? Or like my per­sonal spine, lumbar-​fused with pedi­cle screws. For me, find­ing the right tool for the job requires more than sim­ply secur­ing the appro­pri­ate mechan­i­cal device. Severe degen­er­a­tive arthri­tis of the osteo vari­ety, lim­its my mobil­ity, espe­cially in the hands. I have no grip, no thumb strength and, to make mat­ters worse, I can’t push down on any­thing — torn rota­tor cuffs.

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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. ... read more

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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. ... read more

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