13-Christy03
©1992 Craig Ashby
Collage
3.75″ x 3.75″

Number twelve features the third appearance of Christy Turlington in the series. Another eyebrowless image which would have been all the rage at the time. Once again I think the image is Versace but couldn’t swear to it.

I wanted to branch out from the Judeo-Christian angel imagery and touch a bit on Hinduism. So Christy Turlington gets six vintage hands for her halo.

The hands are all pieces I got from Thomas Malic. Thomas is a friend and fellow artist who used to love cutting up really old magazines he collected in Memphis, Tennessee. These are from the fifties or later.

The halo is finished with a giant blue gemstone and a hole punched clock face. See earlier posts concerning my addiction to hole punches. Ironically I feel there is some parallel between hole punches in a clock face and the massive holes in my memory.

As for the image itself, it succeeds on many levels. The purple/yellow color combination fulfills my oldest addiction for complementary colors. I don’t know why I have always loved those color combinations, but instinctively I go to them.

The damage is wonderful. Once I accepted the first failure of perfection, I relished destroying these pieces. Sometimes the pieces were sanded wet, like this one, and the pulp would just start to blister and then peel away.

Sometimes I would clear coat the image with gel medium and then sand. This allowed for less damage to the pulp but would create a skin peeling effect. The gel medium would take the color and then move slightly, once again like a blister.