collage Archives - Page 17 of 20

Art by mail: Barney Frank, King of the Pacific Salmon

September 10, 2012 by campbell Leave a Comment

Message on postcard:
01. Hi Iona! You requested a postcard “the weirder the better”, so you get Congressman Barney Frank, King of Pacific Salmon. I recently had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Frank while camped near the beach on a windy and moonless night.

02. Around three in the morning I was awakened by an otherworldly noise that seemed to rise and fall with the waves. A sound like the cacophony of ten thousand voices warbling and gulping in unison. Through the trees I could see an eerie light glowing where I knew the beach to be. Of course I went to investigate.

03. The noise got louder and louder. As I approached the beach I worried that I’d made an unwise choice. In the wan light I could see beads of sweat on my forearms in spite of the chill wind. Soon I reached a bluff overlooking the shoreline, where I saw countless thousands of Pacific Salmon gathered ’round what must have been millions of glowing fish eggs. On the periphery of the gathering was an old boombox sucking down D-cell batteries and blasting Foghat.

04. That noise — the fish were trying to sing along to Foghat. And in the center of the gathering was Barney Frank, perched atop a wave-lapped throne before the majestic, glowing eggs. Lit from below by the bioluminescent gametes, Frank raised a bejeweled scepter and began to chant: “Slow ride… Take it easy…”

05. It was then that my footing gave way. One moment I was nodding along to the chant, the next I was tumbling down the sandy bluff. When I came to rest on the beach all I could hear was the wind and the surf and the boombox. The chanting had stopped, and all eyes were upon me, broadcasting a mix of piscatorial terror and anger.

06. But then a voice thundered out of the night: “Leave the surface-man be!” It was Barney Frank! I recognized his voice from C-SPAN, but something was different. I later learned that Barney Frank’s gill protectors, which he wears in public life but had removed for the ceremony, have a slight but noticeable effect on his vocal chords. “This intruder means no harm,” Frank continued, “and so we will teach him the secrets of our fishy ways.” The King of the Pacific Salmon waved his scepter, and a black mechanical whale breached the surface of the ocean. “Come, surface-man, and follow me Jonah-like to the deep.” And so I did, but secrets are secrets and I have to leave it there.

If Americans found no clear answers, they at least asked the right questions. — Detail from reverse side: Related text that I glued in.

Art by mail: Empty jacket

September 7, 2012 by campbell Leave a Comment

Ruthie and Stu (and mostly also Arlo) —

I got your request in time to dedicate this card to your first child, Arlo. Welcome to the world, Arlo! Trust me, there’s a lot of it out there to see. Ruthie and Stu, I’m honored that you would think to ask me to help commemorate such an important event in your lives.

Arlo, when you’re old enough to read and understand this I hope you’ll consider some of the advice I’ve taken the liberty of dispensing here:

1. Have a dog. Treat him or her well. Don’t skimp on walks. Have a bucket list for the dog, and remember that it’s your responsibility to help fulfill it.

2. Being a teenager is rough. I don’t think there are any complete answers to the things that bother you as a teenager, but the good news is that you’ll eventually learn that these things have an extremely finite ability to cause distress and/or pain.

3. If you’re walking down the street in a big city and someone tries to scam you, never tell the person that you don’t believe their story. It only escalates the situation. Instead, say you have no money. I’m not sure what the future economy will look like, but from our perspective in 2012 there’s a good chance this will be true anyway.

4. Drive safely, try to be a good person, get plenty of fresh air and exercise. Read lots of books and don’t be rude to people online.

5. When someone does something nice for you, write a thank-you note. Seriously, I cannot emphasize this enough. People really appreciate it.

I hope this doesn’t sound too preachy. I’ve been traveling all summer long and most of my positive life lessons from this trip have their roots in my deep desire not to wind up living or feeling like people I’ve met along the way. Also, try not to be too cynical.

Art by mail: Extreme Wisconsin geology

September 6, 2012 by campbell Leave a Comment

Message on postcard:
Hi Kate! Greetings from Berkeley, California, where I’m laid up a friend’s apartment recovering from a wild boar attack. The picture on this postcard is of the St. Croix River on the Minnesota-Wisconsin border, I think. It was beautiful when I was out there earlier this summer and the water was high, before drought took hold in the Midwest.

My grandfather lived much of his life in a tiny town called Marine on St. Croix, and I visited his grave in the town’s tiny cemetery. I remember when I was a kid when my grandfather died; I was 12 or 13 years old, and it was the first death in the family I had to deal with. I was up late awake, crying in bed, when my dad came into my room to comfort me. It was his dad who’d just died, and he told me he remembered when his grandfather had died when he was a kid. I quieted down, expecting that he would say more, but that’s all there was, and just that much was all it took for me to find enough quiet to calm down.

My family was out here in California when I was attacked by the boar, and when I was in the emergency room worried about keeping my legs, my dad was there and knew the right thing to say. I don’t remember what it was, probably because of the morphine and the subsequent general anesthesia, but I told him about how what he had said when his dad died had helped me out … but thinking about it now I wonder if it’s not so much about hearing the right thing, but having the right person there to talk to you.

Art by mail: Sleeping Bear Dunes

September 5, 2012 by campbell Leave a Comment

Message on postcard:
Hi Evan — It’s been a great summer and I hope you enjoy this postcard. It’s from Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan. At least, it’s a picture of Sleeping Bear Dunes in the background. The raw materials for the collage came from what I think was a semi-permanent garage sale in the Black Hills, and I glued it together in ~~California~~ Colorado, and I’m writing it in Berkeley, California.

I hope you’ll forgive the typos; I took a Percocet earlier because my legs were hurting, but I really hate these pain pills. They make me feel foggy and stupid and it’s difficult to concentrate. My brain starts thinking of words that come later in the sentence and that my hands shouldn’t yet be ready to write, but my hands are like, “What’s that, Brain? Okay, that seems like a good word to write; I’ll just skip like half the sentence; that should be okay.” And my brain is like, “What? Sorry, I was thinking of the music from Sonic the Hedgehog,” and my brain completely fails to stop my hand from doing something dumb.

And in a more general sense, I just write weird sentences. Like when I want to say that I write wrong words, I’ll say that “my hand does dumb stuff”, which makes it sound like I’m shoplifting candy bars or scratching my crotch while I stand in line at the post office.

I had intended to write about the creative process here, and how this postcard came together, but instead I wrote about how painkillers make me feel, which you really could have learned from any seventh grader with bad decision-making skills, poor self-control, and access to an unguarded medicine cabinet. And if he had written this postcard it would have been much more upbeat because he would love the way Percocet makes him feel, and he would think that parsable sentences are for punk-ass dweebs.

Detail from reverse side of postcard: The creation of Sleeping Bear Dunes.

Sleeping Bear Dunes and artillery mini-collage — Detail from reverse side of postcard: Mini-collage of Sleeping Bear Dunes and artillery.

Art by mail: Badlands porthole

September 4, 2012 by campbell Leave a Comment

Message from postcard:
Hi Ron — You had made a special request that you wanted to get something genuine, and as I try to think of some serious subject matter to blather on, I’m listening to a Portland band called S.K. and the Punk-Ass Bitches sing, “It’s all about the money, it’s all about the cash, I want to sign a big, fat record deal.” Which, who knows, maybe that was genuine for them.

Right now my genuine concerns are actually along the same lines. Not so much about a big, fat record deal, but rather the money and the cash, specifically in the form of the huge deductible on my budget-rate health insurance policy. The tentative plan is to call up the hospital’s financial services group and set up a five-hundred-year payment plan. (If you haven’t been keeping up with my web updates, I got a little tossed around by a wild pig.) On the flip side, I’m genuinely happy to still have both my legs and both my dogs.

I’m spending some time recuperating in the Bay Area while I wait for a follow-up appointment with the doc who stitched me back together. Yesterday I met up with a friend who lives in Oakland, and we drove up to the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond. A park ranger there saw my bandages and asked what happened to my legs. When I told her, her first follow-up question was, “Did it happen on public land?” It’s tempting to think that answering in the affirmative could have dramatically increased the National Park Service’s pig management budget.

This morning I went out for brunch with a former co-worker, and tonight I’m going to a barbecue that a chemist friend from college invited me to. Being in a big city for a few days has begun to feel like normal adult life, which has me thinking a lot about settling down after all this travel and starting to work on the next chapter of my life.

I love and miss Iowa, my home state, but my feelings on the place are too complicated to sum up here, and I don’t think I’ll be making another attempt at putting roots down there. I have a hard time feeling at home in places, and the only times I’ve ever really felt at home were living in Iowa, and also traveling this summer with no home. Life is complicated…

A conglomeration of things

Art by mail: Barney Frank, King of the Pacific Salmon

Art by mail: Empty jacket

Art by mail: Extreme Wisconsin geology

Art by mail: Sleeping Bear Dunes

Art by mail: Badlands porthole

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