"Closed"
When I was a very young child, I played doctor and operated on the head of my sister's favorite doll. As it was an expensive toy, my Mother took me to a New York City doll repair store to impress upon me the cost and trouble to repair my misdeed. I was more impressed by the collection of discarded doll parts. Recently I have been attracted to images of storefronts which provoked a memory of the old doll store. I have filled the windows of my stores with portions of dolls or mannequins because they have no connection to the individual storefronts. As the first store I depicted had a "Closed" sign on the door, I have used that word in the names of the montages in the series. All the images have been digitally integrated.
"ClosedVI"
Closed VI is a Photographic Montage of parts of buildings, an old broken sidewalk, Monet’s backdoor, Metropolitan Art Museum Costume Institute, and a found picture of a man’s back. The final artwork is a picture of place that never existed except in my imagination
"The Allusiveness Recollection"
It was 1945 when these two American families decided to picnic in the Forest of Fontainebleau outside of Paris. The gentlemen, veterans of WWII, received GI-Bill grants to study photography and their wives were to become artists. Years later I met the women and one of them gave me a faded old copy of their picture. I placed them within my image of the display of Christo's flags in New York City's Central Park to bring them into my world.
"Ancestral Home"
"Ancestral Home"
I photographed this large home because I was intrigued by the plaster sculptures lining the walkway. My final impression is a combination of several photos. I added a found old photograph of daughter and her parents which I printed as a ghostly figures.
"Three Stalwart Gentleman"
A friend visited my studio one day in 2008 and handed me a small snapshot of his father and two uncles taken in Germany in the 1930’s and suggested that I incorporate it into one of my photographic montages. The three gentlemen did not survive World War 2. I am suggesting a happier ending: They were able to arrive at the Hoboken, NJ train station in the last century.
"Haunting"
The gentleman depicted in this found picture was once a famous violinist in Russia who disappeared during Stalin's purge of well known Jewish artists. I placed him in the doorway of another found picture to suggest that he left a warm home and was never seen again. He stands there as a ghost of the past.
"Skyline"
I have placed my beach scene of a coast on the Penobscot Bay, Maine within and beyond the confines of a abandoned building photographed in Germany years ago. The building could be holding back further intrusion by the sea or the sea may be absorbing the house.