I've been stuck with this piece for months. Trying to figure out what's next.
I've been referring to it as a work in progress, but in truth I was stuck. I liked the idea of taking the album art, lifted from its original cardboard, then embedding it into a piece--and I did that, but couldn't figure where to take it.
In a recent hospital stay, with nothing to do but play on my phone, I came across an online archive from the US Patent Office. In it I found patents for old toys like Big Wheels, GI Joes, and Barbie. I filed the resource away in my Morgue File and figured I'd figure out something to do with the images later.
This week is later.
I found the Barbie patent, cleaned it up and enlarged it to 6" by roughly 18" and decided to see if I could work her into the Toys in the Attic piece by way of a transfer process. A process I'd never done before other than old skool transfers with copy paper when filling out a deposit slip and whatnot.
The first stab at it, I used way too much oil paint. That Barbie will forever be referred to as ShitStain Barbie in this work. I let SS Barbie dry and came back to working on the piece today.
Today I added, Nicotine Barbie superimposed over SS Barbie, then added a second pull off-center. Nicotine Barbie was much more refined, almost ghost-like relative to SS Barbie, and I was happy enough with the result.
I think it's still a WIP, and I'm putting it aside yet again, 'cause I'm not sure if it's finished.
But this is where things got interesting...
I had set the transfer pulls off to the side and was concentrating on the main piece and when light through the window changed in the studio and I noticed the resulting images left behind on the pulls.
They've got a weird chemistry, that unfortunately I can't translate over in a photo.
The off-prints were beautiful. Not sure what I can do with them, but i think they're much more interesting than what showed up on the Toys in the Attic board. I started out trying to solve the board, but the transfer process made a small family of related objects instead.