Juried Art Show “Pick”

“Fortune A” 
$45
8″ x 8″

Artist: Carol A More
National Collage Society – Juried Art Show 2016

This is the epitome of “found” trash.  My husband was helping friends clean out decades of stuff from an enormous house in Ohio. The parents had passed away and the children were far enough along in life to have boxes of their own memories, so had no interest in the teeming trash pile of their parents’ stuff. Out went boxes of memories, including photographs, handwritten letters (one letter from a son pleading with his father to release him for front-line military duty – the father having used congressional connections to keep his son on desk duty), books, cabinet cards, ephemera of all kinds. My husband, like any good husband of a scrounging collage artist, scooped up boxes of what he thought would be interesting material for my art.  He blew me away with his discernment of what went into the box!  It was better than Christmas morning as I touched every single piece. Can’t wait to use the 1945 page-a-day diary of a debutante in college. I read through it like a page-turning mystery novel. This girl’s goals were simple: who am I dining with tonight and which soiree should I attend this weekend and with whom. Not so high on the list: her studies and grades. I found myself involved in the day-to-day life of what must have been a very pretty, privileged deb.

Back to this piece: I love the hand-typed spreadsheet of stocks and which grandchild received it in trust; the mysterious blue flyleaf of an old book, a torn folder from a cabinet card with unidentified photo.  The plastic “f” for Fortune was something I already had in my ever-expanding collection of flea market finds. Marks of crayon, pigment stick, charcoal, my beloved casein paints and …bam…my accepted submission to the National Collage Society’s annual Juried Show.  There’s a strange story that goes with this. I was in serious battle with a scoundrel of a webmaster (WEBSTARTS!  BOOOO!) who held me hostage for weeks, dropping my e-mail into a black hole. During that electronic hell, my acceptance came through for this prestigious show but that’s right…it dropped into the electronic black hole…while I scrambled night and day to resurrect contact with the outside world. Unfortunately, since I didn’t know my piece was selected, I missed the deadline to ship my collage to the show and so wasn’t eligible for a cash prize.  I literally cried when I discovered this, but recovered in a day or two and this piece does show up on their website and printed booklet of works, so…back to my art lab. Again, the light and dark of it – thanks Claudia for this always applicable life view!