There are storybook weddings and there are StorySlam weddings.

Pictured above is my swan project, completed during a week-long collage course. Based on the creative seed-planting process of the Dadaists, four random bits of inspiration were drawn from a hat (assuming people wear plastic bags as hats). I pulled two bits of text (“HEARD ON THE STREET” and “YOUTH PROGRAM”), a photo of a set of dentures soaking in a glass of water and a weather map depicting high temperatures across the United States. Our task was to create a paper mache mask combining the happenstance elements.

The convergence of those seemingly unrelated elements pointed me towards the idea of urban youth frolicking in an illegally opened fire hydrant on a hot summer day. The resulting mask may serve as a modern day, ceremonial, waterdance headdress. In addition to the overt references, including wrench and fireplug silhouettes and text (IT’S GONNA BE A HOT ONE” and “”OPENING A FIRE HYDRANT IS A CRIME”), the mask covertly suggests the shape of the sun and tribal (African, South American and North American) aesthetic elements.

Now that the scraps have settled, it’s time to be visited by three ghosts:

THE GHOST OF COLLAGE PAST
As I’ve recently crowed, my recent collage work has been influenced by contemporary artist, Matt Bovie. Prior collage work was more heavily influenced by the cut-paper compositions of Henri Matisse. For the past 15 years, I’ve been teaching collage in the middle school classroom, spurred by the work of Matisse, Romare Bearden and Barbara Kruger. Both as an instructor and producer of art, I’ve long appreciated the medium as being one in which compositional/design issues and decisions can be isolated, evaluated and revised quite efficiently.

THE GHOST OF COLLAGE PRESENT
I found this week to be rewarding and invigorating. The byproduct of the learning left me with a bundle of work including the above mask and the Cover Artist collection of modified books. Although I enjoy and appreciate the written word as much as visual art, incorporating text into compositions is not something that comes naturally. I am, however, quite pleased with the results of being challenged to do so, especially on and around the mask. I believe I stumbled upon a letter cutting technique that compliments the visual aesthetic as opposed to competing with it.

Although paper mache mask making has long been a component of my classroom instruction, I seldom considered it a vehicle for my own production. When challenged to participate in the construction of one, however, my appreciation of the craft grew. Not only did it offer a fresh way to consider three-dimensional design components, it allowed me to contemplate issues of identity, personification and anonymity.

THE GHOST OF COLLAGE YET TO COME
I believe that the week’s work will have a long-lasting impact on my personal work. I feel, for the first time, pleased with a process/technique of adding words to visual images. Attempts to do so in the past, via drawing and painting materials, always felt juvenile and oafish. I’m not sure that mask-making will be major component of my art-making repertoire, but I’m willing to leave the door open and the light on.

This week’s experience will have two direct impacts on my middle school art instruction. I look forward to revisiting and creating a lessons that marry text and imagery. Evidence of this happy marriage is all around us, including commercial and fine art, and it’s a mistake to ignore this union in the art classroom. I’m also leaning towards using modeling clay as a base form for a paper mache experience, which was the process utilized in the construction of the above mask. If my students respond negatively to these curriculum additions, I will blame the University of the arts.

In other words, blah blah blah.

Now that I’m ankle-deep in another collage course, it’s time to tip my hat and hand.  A keen art historian may peek at my past collage work (pictured above) and detect the influence of Henri Matisse, Romare Bearden and Jean-Michel Basquiat. A keener art historian, living in the Baltimore area, would recognize the influence of contemporary artist, Matt Bovie.

I have been attracted to, and inspired by, Bovie’s work for many years for it’s strong iconography, bold palette, harmonic compositions and primitive sincerity. Although the work is modern, it seems to encapsulate a mythology spanning generations.

Bovie shows and sells his work in Baltimore but doesn’t exhibit or market his art online. Perhaps that relative digital reclusiveness adds to the allure. I am aware of his work only due to a chain of coincidental acquaintances. Although we’ve never met, I peer at his occasional art-related albums on Facebook and admire from afar.

If you’d like to learn more about the work of Matt Bovie, wander the streets of Baltimore and hope you run into him.

Selected Works by Matt Bovie

Today, I embarked upon a weeklong University of the Arts graduate class, focusing on image and text elements in collage. Part of the embarkation (it’s a word, look it up)  involves reflecting on why we chose to take the course and what we hope to gain. Reflection initiated:

WHY?
Although I make things all year long, it’s nice to have a cluster of time specifically devoted to art production. The reason I chose this class, in particular, is threefold.

Last summer, I took a collage class with Dan Schank at the university. I very much enjoyed the course and was anxious to return to the paste well. I’ve also recently been focusing on writing morsels of nonsense as a contributor to WitStream via Twitter, so I thought this might be a nice opportunity to blend the two outlets. Finally, the course’s emphasis on book manipulation parallels a longtime interest and 2007 show titled Withdrawn.

WHAT?
When the scraps settle, I hope to produce a coherent collection of new pieces that pushes my work in new directions. As always, I want to enjoy making things and I want people to enjoy the things that I make. I also hope to talk/debate about art production, consumption and education with fellow art teachers. Finally, I hope to find some money on the ground.

A firsthand account of secondhand artichokes, told at my sixth First Person Arts event.

You never forget your first hickey, even especially if it was given to you by a hot tub.

Colleague and pal, Kevin Ginsberg, cut his StorySlam teeth as well. Thanks to former student, Hahri Shin, for capturing our moments in the sun.

Maybe it’s cliche, but I try to work snot, a prosthetic leg and a dinosaur into every story. That formula scored me the award for Best Content (literally a jar opener) at First Person Arts’ recent Summer Grand Slam.

Everyone has a story about going to the bathroom in a holiday gift bag. Mine scored me first honors and fan favorite at a recent First Person Arts’ StorySlam at L’Etage.

Sincerest thanks to those who laughed with/at me.

Formed during a recent printmaking course, this printet will be featured in an upcoming two-person gig.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Art does not end, nor begin, with the artist. Images are consumed, produced and consumed again within an aesthetic ecosystem. I nudge my work, encourage it, steer it but I don’t make it from scratch nor do I individually own it. It doesn’t just create a dialogue, it is a dialogue. I am a participant in the conversation. A rung in the ladder. A thread in the tapestry.

This series represents relationships between me, visual and musical influences, the audience, a handful of artists whom I worked alongside and the photographer who shares the two-person show… to name just a few.

Hello, my name is Todd Marrone and I’m a quoteaholic. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been infatuated and inspired by bite-sized nuggets of wisdom. Enjoy a cluster of my favorites:

Famous People

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
-Albert Einstein

“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.”
-Pablo Picasso

“How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun.”
-Vincent Van Gogh

“Everytime I make something I think about the people who are going to see it and every time I see something I think about the person who made it.”
-Keith Haring

“A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.”
-Michelangelo

“There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.”
-Charlie Chaplin

“The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”
-Mark Twain

“I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, the Beatles did.”
-Kurt Vonnegut

“Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.”
-John Lennon

“Hot can be cool, and cool can be hot and each can be both. But hot or cool, man, jazz is jazz.”
-Louis Armstrong

“I never practice; I always play.”
-Wanda Landowska, pianist

“Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Sometimes I paint it and then see it.”
-Jaspers Johns

“I like your work at a distance, but when I come near I’m always disappointed to see that there are objects.”
-Abstract expressionist, to the painter Andrew Wyeth

“Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.”
-John Ciardi

“I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I’ve ever known.”
-Walt Disney

“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.”
-Edgar Degas

“To draw, you must close your eyes and sing.”
-Pablo Picasso

“I shut my eyes in order to see.”
-Paul Gauguin

“I feel as though I haven’t seen an object until I actually start painting it.”
-Janet Fish

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a
child.”
-Pablo Picasso

“When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college- that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?”
-Howard Ikemoto

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
-Pablo Picasso

“Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.”
-Leonardo da Vinci

“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”
-Salvador Dali

“Only the mediocre are always at their best.”
-Jean Giraudoux

“Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.”
-Michelangelo

“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way–things I had no words for.”
-Georgia O’Keeffe

“An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.”
-James McNeill Whistler

“I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products.”
-Marcel Duchamp

“A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.”
-Sir Joshua Reynolds

“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”
-James Thurber

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”
-Pablo Picasso

“How important are the visual arts in our society? I feel strongly that the visual arts are of vast and incalculable importance. Of course I could be prejudiced. I am a visual art.”
-Kermit the Frog, Muppet

“Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.”
-Georges Braque

“He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist”.
-St. Francis of Assisi

“A painting is never finished – it simply stops in interesting places.”
-Paul Gardner

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”
-Charles Bukowski

“You can never do too much drawing.”
-Tintoretto

“I do not want ART for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few.”
-William Morris

“If it is art, it is not for all. If it is for all, it is not art.”
-Arnold Schonberg, composer

“A painted picture is like a vehicle. One can either sit in the driveway and take it apart or one can get in it and go somewhere.”
-Mark Tansey, painter

“My contribution to the world is my ability to draw. I will draw as much as I can for as many people as I can for as long as I can.”
-Keith Haring

“The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting.”
-Vincent Van Gogh

“I paint in order not to cry.”
-Paul Klee

“In life beauty perishes, but not in art.”
-Leonardo da Vinci

“The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you are an artist.”
-Max Jacob

“We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.”
-Will Rogers

“Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”
-Susan Ertz

“My work is done, why wait?”
-Suicide note left by Kodak founder George Eastman

“After I’m dead I’d rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.”
-Cato the Elder

“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.”
- Leonardo da Vinci

“In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism and skepticism and humbug and we shall all want to live more musically.”
-Vincent Van Gogh

“Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don’t expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself. That’s what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be. There’s nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can’t wake you up. You can wake you up. I can’t cure you. You can cure you.”
-John Lennon

Not-So-Famous People

“Your art is too cartoonish, you had better start taking yourself and your work more seriously! F”
-Anthony Evangelista, former Kutztown University Instructor