From space, the planet is blue.
From space, the planet is the territory
not of humans, but of the whale.
7″ x 5″ (7″ x 20″ open) quadfold/quadriptych greeting card/artist’s book, laser printed on Cougar 100 lb cover (FSC Certified). Side A features reproductions of four hand made collages celebrating whales, side B includes excerpts from Whale Nation, by Heathcote Williams. Signed and numbered limited edition of 33.
Typically, my aim as a collagist is to compose entertaining surrealistic single-frame dramas. Whaoila! is not that. These four collages are the result of a self-imposed challenge to create a suite of visually connected collages with abstract shapes and color, connected to each other with continuous lines of common elements. Each lacking a focal point, they became backgrounds for whales carefully cut out for some unknown purpose six months earlier while on a motorcycling adventure with Team Zissou.
Often collages are reproduced as prints or greeting cards to generate some measly income to support the creative enterprise. (Hardly works.) When it came time to think about publishing greeting cards with these images, printing four individual cards of such similarity felt like a bad investment. Because they were created together, as one piece, the littlest amount of thought resolved that they should be presented to whatever audience they reach as the quadriptych that they are. Printing four images created a lot of blank panels, and generated thoughts that tied multi-panel greeting cards to accordion-folded artist’s books. This led to the search for an appropriate text to complement the collages. Previously unknown to me, Heathcote Williams wrote and epic poem titled Whale Nation, published in 1988, which felt like a very good fit.
This new way of presenting my collages to their audience ties together, for the first time, the semi-futile commercial art business of publishing greeting cards with the fine art practice of creating artist’s books, as this new publication is not only a card, but also an accordion-fold book, and is catalogued as such in the growing inventory of things created for which there is slight demand.
