flight fright

i have a hard time flying, only because in recent years i've developed debilitating claustrophobia. i have an anti-anxiety prescription for it... but i also have a policy of never sleeping the night before i have a flight, so i can be sure to pass out the entire time.

amazingly enough, it makes long travel go by really quickly, because i'm only awake for the layovers, and even then, barely conscious and go through all the necessary motions for flight transferral in a haze...

one of these days i'm going to come to in brazil, or australia... with no wallet, phone or passport, and a bad headache.

but i haven't had a panic attack in years.

above, "floaters", 2002 or so

they call it night

i'm strangely especially in love with this most recent collage i've done, for an upcoming group show at white walls.

so many aspects of this one are pleasing to me, some of which are tied simply to the process of creating it. but mostly i enjoy that it is a rather gruesome moment to depict, which manages to look lovely. it became a positive interpretation of mortality - for me, anyway. it went through several incarnations as i was working on it, and i wasn't quite expecting it to become what it did - which is a death portrait of sorts.

i didn't plan to do a portrait of a decomposing girl - originally the white orchids were to be cascading down over her, growing from a giant arm in the sky. things just took a different path. in the same way, i think most people don't expect or plan for death.

sometimes when i step back, i realize that mortality plays a major role in most of my collages, but death is something i only rarely ever think about consciously.