Aug 5, San Francisco: Untitled Collage (Escaping from a Precarious Structure, or: Leaping into Fear)

I believe I had a nightmare or very scary dream, and began with those feelings when I made this. I was with Bruce at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, where he'd gone for a convention. The hotel was wonderful, but I was having a bout of panic attacks, and I didn't go out much. I'd taken my box of collage materials, and I made a number of them on the trip. This is the original of this particular design. Later I enlarged the pieces and made one that I framed. I think it won a prize at an art event in Santa Monica. I'm sure it did. I didn't like it as much as a number of the other things I submitted. Now I remember, the collage shared second place in Mixed Media with Megan Rice's sculpture, and that's how we met.

Back to the collage. Briefly, it certainly reflects the panic involved in leaping from one insecure position into another. Caught between them. The structure must have been awful, as nice as the top of it looks, because the face in the green is very scary. The person on the horse may not be too safe leaving, but the bird is. It's the "safe place." Most of my collages have a safe place somewhere. The underpinning of the house is interesting in that it's ancient. Ancient ruins, upended, out of whack. Even the pillar, the support, is made of water.

(Scanned and posted September 7, 2009)