Tender Cares. That's the name of the collage this detail is taken from. (Yeah, still have a larger scanner on my Wish List.) It's part of an untitled series in which I give genteel Victorian/Edwardian era illustrations of women a sharp twist. They're for the exhibit Pulp Art, which opens at The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center on Jan. 11.
The original engraving was actually titled Tender Cares - and by the time I finished the piece it seemed like an apt - and wonderfully ironic - name. The image was plucked from The Royal Chatterbox (1881), a beautiful, oversized picture book for children spun off from Britain's Chatterbox magazine. It's been languishing in the attic, because I just couldn't take it apart. I'm, obviously, over that.
The cutting is more complex in these collages than anything I've attempted in the past. The anatomical illustrations are from a variety of antique books, including a few different editions of Gray's Anatomy. The background is another one of those made in 2010 at a Greater Cincinnati Calligraphy Guild workshop on creating background surfaces. Everything created then was stashed away in a box that I rediscovered while was working on the bomb series.
One more thing: These collages are larger than past ones. Not huge, mind you, but bigger. I expect them to be 18" x 22" when framed.
