An untroubled state of calm and peace. But I saw this state as also active, expanding from the inner life to the outer, like ripples in a still pond when a pebble is tossed in. With the ripples, a quiet sense of calm expands. To suggest this effect, I created an armature of concentric circles, surfaced with newsprint and modge podge, then increasingly lighter shades of handmade blue paper moving from the center outwards. I then added streaks of color to suggest the transmission of positive thought and good feeling.
ZOANTHROPY
The process of a person believing they are becoming or being seen as an animal. Lycanthropy or the Werewolf Syndrome came to mind, but that involves a person physically shapeshifting into a wolf. Zoanthropy involves self-perception only, but tying to depict that two-fold aspect – the self and the animal alter-ego – was daunting. A good part of my adult life, being named Dare, I have often been called Dare Bear. So, a bear it would be. In Photoshop I overlayed my photo with that of a grizzly, looked for points of intersection, and then reworked the combination to create facial shapes that could be broken apart, painted, and then recombined in a series of layers. It was a lengthy process. Having a beard and glasses I think helped keep my presence strong in the piece. Each of the facial pieces was cut out on a scroll saw, very carefully due to many being small and intricate in shape. Reassembling all the pieces was challenging due to my needing to pre-see which went in the background and which in the foreground and then painting them an appropriate color. There are six layers, not counting the circular base.
ABIBLIOPHOBIA
A fear of running out of things to read. How could I represent a negative – something missing? With all the books in the world, how could a lack of books happen? Book burning came to mind, and I was off and running. In an art supply store, I found an amazing handmade black paper with random, asymmetrical holes. By underlaying it with a red paper, I had the embers of a fire. Out of a single sheet of plywood, I slowly and carefully cut the combined outlines of books that would, when painted a ghostly hue, represent the books burned, floating above the embers. Above that layer I floated a message: BAN BOOK BURNING and a subtext BETTER READ THAN DREAD that played off the 60’s anti-nuclear maxim Better Red than Dead. This text and its support circle were also cut out of a single piece of plywood. Note: previously I had considered plywood an undesirable, less elegant material to work with, preferring solid wood. But I have discovered that, with its multiple layers and grain directions, and flexibility, it is the best material for cutting intricate shapes.
RISK
A high likelihood of something unwanted and negative happening. Many things came to mind, but the presentation of the R I S K letters being stacked and balanced in a precarious fashion seemed the simplest and most non-specific way to display the fear of collapse or failure. I chose fonts I thought would balance together in a seemingly unstable way, cut them out on a scroll saw, sanded and painted them, and then had to figure out how to make them fit together. The process was challenging. I created various layouts on computer, but translating a two-dimensional image into 3D is not easy. The pieces had to literally stand and balance on each other in a believable way. Several modifications and replacements were needed before I was ready to start assembling. A couple of lucky guesses and a bit of serendipity happened along the way. The most interesting was my having a neighbor who shares my love of things, be they puppets, paper, marbles, etc. As I was trying to figure out what I was going to mount my RISK piece on, she gave me a bag of flea market castoffs that included a pressed-metal wall sconce perfect for my base. I wanted the letters to suggest circus acrobats attempting the highly improbable. I painted each letter as an individual but with graphic elements that interacted with those of the other participants.
CHOWDER
Traditionally, a rich soup typically containing fish, clams, or corn with potatoes and onions. What came to mind instead was more of a mental chowder, which played a bit with the jibe “chowderhead” or head with thoughts jumbled like chowder. My head is constantly filled with diverse and favorite memories. I wanted the chowder I made to reflect those memories. Into the stew of my thoughts, I added the curiosity of a clockwork gear, various loved toys and parts of games my kids and I played with, a piece of sea glass and a shell from my beachcombing, and a piece of a car’s decorative type-badge to reflect my love of typography. The colorful dots and circles on the bowl rim are just for fun; I had this zesty handmade paper just waiting to be used.
CALAMITY
Sudden change can create cataclysmic fear and upset, emotional and physical. A bolt out of the blue – be it lightning, intense anger, a sudden fall, or a thrown brick – can induce fear and panic in the unsuspecting. I wanted to capture this effect. I remembered an old, damaged first-aid box I had stashed away. I decided the calamity, whatever it might be, could be presented inside the box, and the catastrophic effect it would produce demonstrated outside the box. Inside I used the word calamity in vibrant and jumbled letters, and a lightning bolt to suggest a condition of sudden chaos. Outside I cut interlocked circles from a single piece of plywood, an idea from the comics that use swirls and spinning lines to express turmoil and active confusion. The characters I used were chosen for their obvious loss of physical control or intense response in an unexpected situation.
XERTZ
Xertz struck me as a ridiculous and unnecessary word for imbibing since we already have so many: down, gulp, guzzle, knock back, quaff, sip, slug, slurp, swallow, swig, swill, sup, toss back. But I loved the potential of the X as a mouth. So a typographic solution seemed in the offing. I cut out the letters on a scroll saw, painted them, and figured out how to mount the bottle and have the word flow from it to the mouth. I created a background, which took several layers of different handmade paper and lots of Mod Podge. Then everything came together and zzztreX or Xertz was born.
WONKY
WONKY: unstable, shaky, crooked, off-center, lopsided, askew, misaligned, faulty, weak, unsatisfactory. Donald Trump and his mismanagement of America and, in extended disruption, the world order came to mind. I made a typographic interpretation of the word, and as I researched fonts, Trump’s influence kept influencing my choices. I have ended with a typographic story of his dismal activity in office. W represents the world he’s infected, the infection referenced by the yellow streak running through. O became the Corona virus he so thoroughly ignored and helped spread. N became Trump with his flip of yellow/orange hair and a red MAGA hat. K became Trump’s fascist political base which in this case are dressed as Storm Troopers, trying to kick peace and freedom out of our social structure. Y became America represented by stars and stripes. The gridded background suggests the cages immigrant children and adults were held in.
TYPOGRAPHIC SPLENDOR
I hoped for opulence, fineness, elegance, pomp, and sumptuousness. I decided to do an outdoor piece. It measures 5’ x 4’. Each font was chosen for its character and ability to interact with the other fonts. They were hand cut on a scroll saw, sanded, sealed, masked, and spray painted at least two colors. Every sealant and color was applied in multiple layers. After many months, the paint is beginning to peal and I’ve decided to let it do so, remembering that most of my collected letters are old and weatherworn. I planned the layout on my computer, added a grid, and then enlarged the grid with string on the fence where I wanted to mount it. I hung the printout on the fence and used it as a placement guide. The letters had to fit together in a very specific pattern with specific spacing. I had to develop the circles in the background to even out the uneven mounting surface.
TARADIDDLE
Pretentious nonsense: A simple definition for an almost unfathomable word on its first hearing. How does something taradiddlish suggest humbug, bilgewater, twaddle, hokum, bunk, or meaninglessness? I started trying to visualize an assemblage that could illustrate profound foolishness. I had a wonderful red metal box I think might have once been a home for toys, found in a recycle depot. I added an artist’s wooden sketch hand found in someone’s sidewalk trash. The doll’s head was flotsam found on the beach; the neckless was inherited through a family friend. Once those were installed, I needed to fill the other vertical half-space. A friend had given me a broken wooden wall clock that I left outside to weather. Digging through its debris, I picked up a corroded lump of metal that, upon cleaning, became the former brass pendulum, and a flat, spiraled wire used as the clock’s gong. The last thing added was a retired puppet. As I placed it into the box to check fit, its legs folded into place as if it had chosen to sit there. I added an ornate gold collar to the box, cut from plywood, to add presence. The final touch was to bejewel the upper left corner with colorful buttons.
JOY
When he was in day care, one of his teachers reported finding my youngest son looking in a mirror, proclaiming, “It’s great to be Max!” That positive attitude seems to have stayed with him. I decided to celebrate the boy I knew when he was nine with the things he loved and I thought to save. The Godzilla t-shirt was his favorite and felt singularly important in capturing his nine-year old self. The worn, red sneakers were an emphatic symbol of his active life that I saved when outgrown. The M of his name is made from zoobs, his favorite toy. The A is a wooden alphabet block. The X was my first foray into working with wire in assemblage. The moon in the upper right corner with the blue train attached to it is a nod to The Polar Express, a book we enjoyed reading together. The triple 3s add up to his age.
PIQUANT
Agreeably stimulating and lively to the taste, a pungent or sharp flavor, of an interestingly provocative character, sharp or aggressive to the feelings. My addition to this definition is a pungent aroma. Garlic came to mind for both taste and aroma. I had a found object that looked to be a Mexican carving of a gourd or large seedpod, but that also reminded me of a head of garlic. This became my centerpiece that I splashed with paint and wrapped in hand-painted, crumpled newsprint. I coated the paper with Mod Podge to hold its folds in place and give it body and stature. I added brass wire, which, being very malleable, allowed me to twist and spiral it upwards. At the tips I placed twists of painted newsprint to suggest the pungent aroma.
INELUCTABLE
Inevitable fate – not to be avoided, changed, or resisted. Death and taxes came to mind. Death, or better, life’s remains, won. I dug though my boxes of found objects and life’s flotsam – skulls, shells, crab carcasses, sponges, lichen, seed pods, urchins, sand dollars, baby doll pieces, an old worn comb. Life’s remains are often the things we’re drawn to pick up at the beach or on a hike or at random moments in random places. I reused the wallpaper-wrapped box from an earlier project I abandoned, the red spoon came from a recycle depot, the wooden panel from a discarded fruit box, and the distressed wire mesh was found at a salvage yard.
IMBROGLIO
Defined as an entanglement, a confused heap, an acutely painful misunderstanding, and a violently confused altercation; the animated disputes in Mort Walker’s Beetle Bailey came to mind – fists flying, gralixes (cartoon curses), feet and faces all spun up into a cloud of conflict. I wanted to try to capture this confused entanglement in 3D. I cut out several circles, painting them white, stenciling a few with various cartoon images of body parts and grawlixes, then overlapping them. But when lying flat, one overlapping another, they lacked animation. I tilted the scroll saw’s cutting surface to cut angled notches in the circles, then fit them together creating the 3D embroiled cloud I was looking for. I needed an observer to accentuate the quietude the dust-up was arising from. Officer Pup from Krazy Kat, witness to many scuffles between Krazy and Ignatz, came to mind.
HERO
A cape and tights superhero – not my choice, but it felt unavoidable. So I decided to do something typographic. I had an antique gold, italic wooden “h” and made it my center character – in flight with leg tucked, adding stenciled stars to its body. I had the remaining “e,” “r,” and “o” to make a hero with. The lowercase “e” became the head with an eye and proud, smiling mouth. I found an R that, when flipped and modified, became a red cape. But I still had the “o” to place. Nothing felt right about connecting it to the “h”. Then I realized the “her” part could be in flight and the “o” could be the astonished mouth of a spectator.
DOLOROUS
I loved the sound of “Dolorous,” but realized I didn’t want to create something that would elicit a feeling of great sorrow or distress. “Drollery” came to mind as I worked on possible approaches. I decided that I could present the sadness of Dolorous with the whimsy of Drollery through cartoons. Cartoonists can capture explicit human emotion in simple but concise line art: The face of Charlie Brown can say everything. I took cartoons from the Internet into Photoshop, modified and rebuilt them from poor quality low resolution, stripped any color out, and sometimes reoriented an arm, or head tilt. Finding enough relevant cartoons for four scenarios took a strong familiarity with the cartoon strips to pull the disparate pieces together to tell their dolorous stories. I added the gloomy cloud and cutout letters on top to frame the piece.
CROSS PURPOSES
Confusion or failure to communicate because people are working with or talking to each other with different intents or goals. In 2022, many of our political conversations were at cross-purposes. I created the black-and-yellow background based on highway caution signs. Then developed the talking hands by combining modified cartoon faces found on the Internet with a classic cartoon pointing hand. Having the hands pointing in opposite directions emphasized the sense of dysfunction this kind of conversation can have. I added the green highway TO sign to emphasize that both parties (blue for Dems and red for the GOP) are searching for the right direction, but with differing and often conflicting approaches. The green of the sign also implies Climate Change.
PRECIPICE
A steep, overhanging place; a hazardous situation. A friend mentioned that to create a precipice, you’d need a stable structure from which it could jut and hang. I realized that this project would work best as a free-standing assemblage, something that suggested height and strong verticality. I had a weathered baluster discarded when a house was renovated. I also had many randomly cut pieces of ¼ inch plywood left over from other projects. I developed a schematic to allow a four-directional structure to join vertically in the middle, and rise to a level where I could add a precipice. I wanted to suggest a granite structure, but in an abstract way with a vertical blending of shapes, but also horizontal forms to suggest plateaus and vegetation. I used several colors of spray paint, forcing the spray into dots, patches, and drips to suggest granite and foliage. The teacup and its spoon were added to bring focus to the precipice.
LIBERATION
My trans-son’s self-liberation is my strongest and most personal example of liberation. He was born with a strong sense of self-direction, from organizing pre-school friends into a postal service with himself as the postmaster, to starting a song-selling sidewalk business at eight, to performing in plays, and finally deciding to move to New Orleans after college to establish himself as an artist. After college, he came out as transgender, and sought gender-affirming medical treatment. He felt these to be necessary steps in order to thrive in his adult life. This portrait is meant to express his self-guidance from youth to adulthood, following his passion for dinosaurs, which play a prominent part in his New Orleans art.
SHELTER FROM THE STORM
Instead of representing a natural storm, I chose the scariness of an emotional storm expressed by Calvin’s parents due to any number of his indiscretions. It was easy to find examples of them angrily responding to something Calvin had perpetrated. And, after lengthy research, I found a single example of Calvin expressing possible penance over some undoubtedly outrageous incident. For the storm, after searching through many images and textures, I happened upon the swirling pattern in a yellow arrow painted on the cement floor of a parking garage. Through Photoshop this became the swirling storm cloud. I created the small red house from sheet metal, placing Calvin in it looking out in seeming trepidation. I gave this piece to a family friend who had weathered a difficult childhood.