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21 December 2004. I often brag that one of the benefits of being an under-recognized artist like me is that you get to know other under-recognized artists--which leads to happinesses like the Christmas present I got this year from fellow under-recognized artist Carol Stetser, a portion of which is shown below:
The work consists, altogether, of 18 cards in a folding plastic holder with a ribbon attached you can use to hang the holder on the wall, if you want to (and as I have). One of the cards is a duplicate. Whether this was intended or not, I don't know, but it made me realize how such cards could be used to tell a story.
I find them visually appealing as a purely illumagistic sequence, but I take them as hieroglyphically visio-textual. Why? I think only because I know of Carol as primarily a visual poet. Hence, I recognize the pre-language they can be taken as. Are they found illumages, illumages painted on asphalt or illumages of paintings or oil slicks on asphalt? I don't know, but their foundness is part of what makes them effective, I'm sure.
Note: it makes me smile to consider how people in near-"poverty"like me get so many gifts like Carol's to me that the rich descendents of the rich people who spend fortunes on Picassos, Monets and Rembrandts will in a hundred years be spending fortunes on. Oh, yes, I'm certain this will happen. Maybe my own work will be forgotten (fat chance!), but not the work of all the people who have sent me work they've done.
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