OVO

Anonymous: Lost Dog Reward! This 8.5 x 11 inch photocopy poster was made by someone I knew in the early 1990s in Portland Oregon. The seven-digit phone number on the poster has been obscured.

Trevor Blake: Swamp Flower.  Ink.  May 2011.

Trevor Blake: Everybody Draw Mohammed Day 2011.  May 2011.  Ink drawing.  Public domain.

See also:
Trevor Blake: Everybody Draw Mohammed Day 2010.
Trevor Blake: The New Comics Code Authority.

Trevor Blake: Landscape. Ink. October 2008.

Trevor Blake, Portland Oregon USA. May 2011. Photograph by Kirby Urner.

Surrealist Cigar Bands after René Magritte. Trevor Blake, May 2011, digital image. After La trahison des images (1928–29) by René Magritte. Public Domain.

Wikipedia, Carcassonne: “Carcassonne is a tile-based German-style board game for two to five players, designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede and published in 2000 by Hans im Glück in German and Rio Grande Games in English. It received the Spiel des Jahres and the Deutscher Spiele Preis awards in 2001. It is named after the medieval fortified town of Carcassonne in southern France, famed for its city walls.”

My microcarcassonne is made with magnets, sewing pins, paper and a candy box.  Scale is one half inch per background square.

Click image to enlarge.

From the 1906 book The Outbursts of Everett True by A. D. Condo and J. W. Raper. With thanks to Barnacle Press.

Here ends my year-and-one-half weekly republication of The Outbursts of Everett True. There are many more Everett True comics at stwallskull and Barnacle Press.

Trevor Blake: Quit While You Are A Head. Digital image. 1 April 2010.

Trevor Blake: Collage 1988 – 2010
May 2011
Sound Grounds Coffee House
3711 Belmont St, Portland Oregon 97214 United States

Artist’s Statement

My first collages were made in the late 1970s when I was in 8th grade. They were inspired by comic books and advertising, and were meant to be funny. Collage was a way of making a picture that including elements I could not yet draw to my satisfaction. In the 1990s I worked in used book stores. The source material for my collages improved. Collage became a way of making a picture instead of a substitution for drawing. In the 2000s I’ve started learning how to use a computer to make collages.

Collages are evidence that meaning of an image is in the mind of the artist and the viewer, not in the image itself. There is no minimal meaning that is transferred from a source image into a collage. What is seen as the meaning of an image does not reside in the image itself. Therefore laws against hate speech, pornography, and blasphemy are of questionable merit. Projecting meaning onto fragments is how collage works and how the world works. Fortunately, it does work.

Collage is often criminal and immoral, made up of the work of others without credit or compensation. Stating this fact does not excuse it. It may partially cleanse my debt to others that the majority of my works are entered into the public domain.

Collage is enjoyable, inexpensive to produce and encourages design skills. Paper, scissors or a hobby knife, and glue are all that anyone needs.

Choose your meanings and fragments well.

Thank you.

From the 1906 book The Outbursts of Everett True by A. D. Condo and J. W. Raper. With thanks to Barnacle Press.

A handsome reward is offered for the Everett True films.

Trevor Blake: Untitled. Portland, Oregon USA. April 2011.

Trevor Blake: Fiestaware. Oregon. April 2011.

Trevor Blake: I am Not an Oregon Pig. April 2011. Portland, Oregon USA.

From the 1906 book The Outbursts of Everett True by A. D. Condo and J. W. Raper. With thanks to Barnacle Press.

Trevor Blake: Soldiers. Pen. February 2011.

From the 1906 book The Outbursts of Everett True by A. D. Condo and J. W. Raper. With thanks to Barnacle Press.

Tape fragmentation consists of interrupting the audio input to a tape deck from the take deck. That is, using the tape deck to fragment an audio input.

I often record my environment for source material in audio collages and for cassette correspondence. The portable recorder I use has a pause button that slurs when turned on while recording. I decided to see what it would sound like if I turned the pause on and off rapidly while recording. The results cannot be explained by someone who wasn’t there. The sound is alien and familiar at the same time.

My home recorder has a pause function that is exact and without slurs. Using this deck, I fragmented sounds from the radio (mostly classical music and speech), other tapes I’ve produced and sequences programmed into my synthesizer. I also tried unplugging and plugging in the power cord to the tape deck while recording, but the results weren’t satisfactory.

I believe the best fragmentation comes from speech. One can recognize voices and an occasional word, but the overall effect is the destruction of language. Words are cut apart and re-combined in new and unpredictable ways.

Fragmented tapes are very easy to ignore. If you set your mind to something else while listening to a fragmented tape you will find it easy to block out. It is the kind of destroyed sound that you hear when there is a television on in the next room, or when a radio is playing in a passing car. This background noise effect and the ease of creating fragmented tapes makes them ideal audio accompaniments to performances or exhibits for those with limited access to expensive recording equipment.

from OVO 1 (1987)
reprinted in Sound Choice issue 5.

April Fools!

From the 1906 book The Outbursts of Everett True by A. D. Condo and J. W. Raper. With thanks to Barnacle Press.

From the 1906 book The Outbursts of Everett True by A. D. Condo and J. W. Raper. With thanks to Barnacle Press.

Trevor Blake: Self Portrait. March 2011