Monday, December 10, 2012

A Bit About the Process

There’s a place in Thomasville with a wonderful selection of tape. Ever since I started making tape collages I never thought about the small differences in tape. I can tell you with strong conviction that Target brand packing tape is the strongest out there. Any time you encounter really cheap tape, it’s cheap for a reason because it will not pull an image off of a late 1960’s magazine for shit. Sometimes, I buy the cheap tape but I have to use it for certain purposes. I cannot put cheap tape down for the place and pull method; I have to use cheap tape to hold everything down after the process is finished. Back to the Thomasville store, so they have a lot of cheap colored tape for a dollar a roll, meaning I’ve purchased tons of the stuff. Here’s the shelf. It’s so beautiful.
The other aspect to my mail art equation are the images. Mostly I buy old magazines from thrift stores and general junk shops. When the library sales start to appear, I stock up with as much stuff as I can possibly find…good stuff that is. I like old images and old books, cheap paper and the ridiculous tome of antiquated medical manuals. Here’s the Thomasville book sale.
Here’s my haul. I meant to take a picture of one of the books. The book was entitled “How to Dress Rich.” The copyright was from the middle 80’s, what a surprise about that. I think I paid four dollars and some change for all of these beauties.
At the dollar store in Thomasville also bought a toilet plunger that works well for a tape holder. In the background is a portrait that Misty made of me a few years ago. I still want someone to paint me sitting on a horse all dignified…maybe before an epic battle. I need to get her on this.
And finally, the product, some actual work. I made a big pile of postcards and then a couple of the larger pieces that I don’t know what I’m going to do with. I’ll probably mail most of them but the rest I think I’m going to keep.

5 comments:

quincy said...

You didn't say whether or not you cleaned that plunger. Eeww. I like your work. Are you sure you can pull off dignified in a picture?

zzzzzzzz said...

Thankfully the plunger was new, or at least it was sold as new.

I'm going to send you something over the break. I don't break promises!!!

Dignified? No I don't think I have that in my arsenal but I would like to get the chance to try it on. I really want one of these paintings though, really badly.

Karen Isaacson said...

that plunger is the most brilliant tape holder I've ever seen. never really thought about the correlation between crappy packing tape and crappy image transfer but it stands to reason!

zzzzzzzz said...

I don't know how I got the idea? I was in the store and put one and one together and ended up with tape and plunger.

Karen, going to add your blog to my roll as well. Not sure how I've missed your blog anyway.

Cappuccinoandartjournal.blogspot.com said...

I love the way that tape looks on the shelves....and I really - really -want to go to that library book sale....I am crazy over fi ding old books to tear up...