Collages: a closer look

The value of being able to copy an image from any book hinged on being able to find the right book. It was too simple to observe that libraries are full of books. To search for a particular image required a familiarity with libraries and enjoyment of using them. I had spent years developing this skill without remotely supposing that, someday, it would have a tangible utility. It was a curiosity that the glimmer of dawn of digital imaging added new value to libraries of books. Not for long.

The Neon Museum: 1992

I grew up around renderings, the name for sketches or paintings that suggested the spirit of an architectural project more than they were expected to be final drawings. The story went that, with $200 to pay for a rendering, a savvy developer could find financing for a whole project.

I thought that the current plan for Fremont Street re-development was anemic. I proposed that, in the glorious concentration of signage that is Fremont, an appropriate way to show respect for it would be to add much more neon. Fremont was the logical site for a neon museum.

The central column suggests that a single armature could serve as the strut for an entwined collage of signs perhaps 100 feet tall. The signs would be high in the sky where they were designed to be seen. There could be a row of such posts.

The figures in the foreground are patrons enjoying a different museum gallery. The bolt on the right side is a sketch of an entry arch to the space. The splash of neon in the upper left corner is another hint of an entry arch framing the museum. Fremont was missing a frame.

My proposal was a paper airplane in the wind. I had no chance of access to any of the principals in the conversation about how to fix Fremont. Still, for ten years or so, a print of the piece hung in an honored place in the tiny City of Las Vegas office of The Neon Museum, where Richard Hooker patiently charted the museum's progress.

500 copies of the image were sold as postcards, especially on the Strip in The World's Greatest Gift Store. The architect Jon Jerde described his Fremont Experience vault as a frame around Fremont.

The Birth of Europe, 1992

Medieval Europe visualized a cosmos that included mechanical elements as well as ancient mythology. The world we know exists within a clockwork galaxy. Always, there is the mystery of what happens beyond the edge of a cosmology. Whatever is there is a threat to the world within the clock. Fear the edge.

Chinese mythology describes land masses as resting on the backs of turtles that sometimes shake. Could we see deeper onto the turtle backs, we would find Venice and Bagdad and Peking. I had Milton in mind. I guessed that such imagery would appear soon in CGI movies.

Corkscrew

1991

It is an arcane page from a catalog I made of compositional strategies. As the sleeping Saint Cecelia turns on herself, so does the composition.

Long Knots, 2000

It is an exercise in texture and severe vertical composition. The leather-like strands are from the camel saddle of a North African Tuareg nomad. The strands of greased hair are from a tribe in Sudan. The metallic pieces are from the Japanese fashion designer, Issey Miyake.