earthsip: Marina's Art

Sunday, October 22, 2006

The Gap

(by Marina)

Except for one "Drawing 101" class, I'm not trained as an artist, so maybe that's why collage interests me: it's definitely grassroots, outsider art. Probably a stretch to say that it's inherently more political, though. And Wite-Out art, or, as I like to call it, "Planet Pleaser White Multi-Purpose Correction Fluid" art (since that is the vegan product that I use to create mine) is even more so. Easily accessed materials, found in most desk drawers nowawdays. Using Wite-Out/Planet Pleaser on an image feels similar to Asian brush painting: it's not about making lines go the way you want them to so much as creating spaces that weren't there before, and even further, creating what I think of as negative spaces. Like the child's eyes: what was warm and alive is negated, blanked out. The bottom right corner, where the paper pieces don't meet was intentional---only machines can make something perfect, and a machine is the last thing I want to be.

To find out how you're doing in the consumption realm, try this quick quiz.

How many choices?

Illusions of Security

What is that is keeping you from your life?

(by Marina)

When I created this, I was thinking about how dreams often tell us the truth we can't tell ourselves in the daylight; how our dreamlife is just as real as our waking life; and how, even on a lazy, hot afternoon, we contain the seeds of that dreamlife self from when it's 3 am on a black and windy night. For one of my friends, it made him think, "What is that is keeping you from your life?"

You might have entirely different thoughts about these images...