Miles The Baby Muse

 I like figures in my collages…you know, people. To quote Arthur Lee, “I think people are the greatest fun.” That makes sense, right? Either way, I like people and I like faces. I especially like people with faces and personalities that show up on those faces. Because of this, I have a lot of people in my collages.

Some folks, like Ringo Starr or Richard Nixon, tend to appear over and over again. Noses? Do noses connect those two characters? Nixon surely wasn’t a drummer. Nikita Khrushchev gets used often and boy does Khrushchev have a face and eyebrows…boy does he have eyebrows. Other than those few characters, not a lot of people get used over and over. No Shelley Duvall! (How about that obscure reference, do you get it?) When I’m picking out pictures to use in collages, I like to see the personality, I like to have a pun in there…a slight joke. Unfortunately, I’m limited to what I can find.

I tried to rectify this problem by using my own face. I’m not that vein, I just know I can make fun of myself and no one get too mad about it. Best of all, I can express the emotion I want because I’m creating the picture. I went so far with this that I had a photo shoot where I posed in as many configurations as possible to later drop into collages / broadsides and random manifestos. Contrary to that one statement I read about myself years ago, I’m not interested in becoming the next Cavellini. I don’t have the money for that. Who knows what that guy was doing?

What I’ve come to say in this blog, is that I have a new muse. His name is Miles, he’s not a year old, he has six teeth, and falls down a lot. Miles is my son. He’s a lot cuter than I am (cuter than Ringo, Nixon, and Khrushchev) so it makes sense to use his visage in my collages and random projects. 

Miles in his "cage" with some newly returned mail. His favorite flavor is manila.

 When he was first born, I would take random pictures of him with an instant print camera. It would spit out a rectangle picture that was a sticker. I’d stick that image to a painted bingo card with some words and the date on it, and send it to family. It was a one of kind postcard and I made dozens of those.

Lately I’ve been making a lot of paper collages of him. I print off pictures of him on random colors of paper. Sometimes I copy and copy them to reduce the quality of the image. I add his image along with a random phrase or sentence to some sticky paper. From there I build a collage (he’s the focus for sure) around him. Some of them are funny, some of them are weird. Most of these I’ve mailed to friends and family. Not sure if a random person from Belgium would understand the project, or any of my projects? I guess I should send to whoever; it doesn’t really matter. Since I can make these on the couch in the evenings, I’ve made at least a hundred of them. Most I’ve mailed away, but I’ve kept quite a few of my favorites in a binder.

The original images came from our first beach trip.

First class male.

 The projects keep growing.

One day I printed off a lot of images of his face on sticky paper. From there I asked mail-art friends if they would put the stickers up somewhere in their town and then send me evidence of it. It was a way for Miles to do a little traveling before he consistently wore shoes. This project will go on for a while, or at least until I’ve gone through all the mail-art friends that would do me such a kindness. So far Miles has traveled to Greece, Canada, Germany, Australia, and even Kansas. 

Vizma and Miles in Australia.

Who knows what the next project will be? Maybe a staged Christmas card? I no idea if he’s going to like these when he’s older or if he thinks I’m creepy for creating them? Either way, he’ll have a lot of material to look at. He’s cute, his face needs to get out there more.