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The Muse's Storage Box

The Muse's Storage Box
Copyright Diane Lou.

Alchemical Dreams and Disparate Realities

Rust and bones, broken toys and old text, game boards, gears and nests. Even as a child such odd, unwanted items evoked a pit-of-the-stomach response that bordered on exhilaration.
While I make no attempt to conjure up specific feelings in the viewer, the ambiguous juxtapositioning of familiar materials creates art that evokes half-forgotten, dream-like visions that beg to be interpreted by the viewer. There is a sense of deja vu (the already seen) tempered by a sense of jamais vu ( the never seen, or the illusion that the familiar does not seem familiar), and this contradiction asks the viewer to dig deeply, to look inside her own repository of wisdom, intuition and experience to find her own meaning in the familiar objects she sees.
The once-private discards of people's material lives that I collect for my art seem to carry universal memories with them, memories that can engage and mystify the viewer. Their beauty lies within the rust, the erosion, the wear, and the mere fact that they were once possessions.
I play with abandon and with no forethought. Each piece of detritus seems to suggest to me a relationship with some other piece, and I begin to put them together and wait for the mental "buzz" that lets me know I am proceeding as I should. Even at this point, I continue to remain in the play state and will not allow myself to direct the outcome of the piece, a process that requires complete trust. The outcome often mystifies me as much as it might any viewer.
Remember when, as a child, whatever was in reach became the instrument of your creative exploration? That is my life. A rusty, flattened piece of metal on the street, a gnawed bone by the roadside, a unique twisted branch from a tree, a fallen nest, a broken egg, a snake's skin, a dead butterfly...all will be added to my collection and eventually have their beauty honored in one of my pieces. The resulting art creates a new story with its own imagined history, one that invites the viewers to lay some claim on it by allowing themselves to be enveloped by the sight, the history, and the ambiguity of the realities before them.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Lamentations in its final form...

Here is Lamentations in its final form...finally.  It wasn't one of those pieces that flew together, so in this type of piece, I really have to trust my intuition step by step.  Before I had any idea what was going inside, I had to trust that it was going to be OK to fasten in the checkerboard pieces in the bottom squares and across the top....and that whatever I did, the old tapestry background was going to be OK too, and so on.  Of course, if it weren't, I'd have to rip them out!

Here's a detail shot where you can see the rusted horseshoe nails holding the taxidermy hoof in place, the resin hand (screwed in from the back) holding some sort of vintage cross, an old chain draped across, and the wire cage hanging from a concealed hook.

Busy doing all my alternative treatments and meds.  Seems to take up much of the day.  Got the juicer fixed tonight so now I can make fresh vegie juices to drink every day.  Thanks for all the good wishes, everyone.  Su gave me a wonderful visualization of knights on horseback (killer cells) attacking the tumors who are boars, all with a background of old tapestries.....well, it was quite wonderful and noisy!  Thanks, Su.
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