Paper Sun
Paul Dean, Paper Sun, collage, 14″x14″, 2007.
Echoes
Paul Dean, Echoes, collage, 14″x14″, 2007.
Journey To The Center Of The Mind
Paul Dean, Journey To The Center Of The Mind, collage, 14″x14″, 2007.
Just back from the Baton Rouge Gallery, these four collages are meant to resemble simple cubic diamonds. They are named after a few of my favorite psychedelic songs. Because, let’s face it, diamonds are psychedelic.
By faith Enoch was translated
“By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and [his body] was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.”
—Hebrews 11:5, Holy Bible, King James Version, 1611. Enoch went directly to heaven without dying. A neat trick!
the black cat bone
“Every black cat has within its body one bone that will either grant the owner invisibility or can be used to bring back a lost lover. To secure this bone, a black cat must be thrown alive into a kettle of boiling water at midnight. The animal dies in agony, and the practitioner boils the carcass until the meat falls off the bones. Some say that the special bone will be the top one left when the water boils away, others say it can only be found by placing each bone in turn beneath the tongue while an assistant stands by to notify the practitioner that he has become invisible, and still others swear that if all the bones are thrown into a stream that runs north (uncommon in most of North America), the desired bone will be one that floats on the water and heads south. Once found, the black cat bone is carried in a mojo bag and anointed with Van Van Oil to bring back a lost lover. The oil or fat of the cat is bottled for use as a candle dressing and for anointing gambler’s charms.”
—Harry’s Blues Lyrics Online, blueslyrics.tripod.com, updated December 17, 2000.
an old hoodoo formula
“Van Van is an old hoodoo formula for oil, incense, sachet powders, and washing products that are designed to clear away evil, provide magical protection, open the road to new prospects, change bad luck to good, and empower amulets and charms. It is the most popular of the New Orleans or “Algiers style” hoodoo recipes. As an amulet enhancer, it is closely associated with both the rabbit foot and the lodestone. . . .”
—Catherine Yronwode, Hoodoo In Theory And Practice, www.luckymojo.com, 2007.
The Blues
“1 – The Blues… It’s 12-bar, bent-note melody is the anthem of a race bonding itself together with cries of shared self victimization. Bad luck and trouble are always present, and always the result of others, pressing upon unfortunate and down trodden poor souls, yearning to be free from lifes’ responsibilities. Never ending beats repeat the chants of sorrow, and the pity of a lost soul many times over. These are the Blues;
2 – Found under the blazing sun of the Northern Mississippi cotton fields, it’s father, the old African tribal call and response, and it’s mother, the Gospel sounds which bellowed from the church choirs;
3 – A lead worker would chant the opening lines, and the chorus of workers would answer, falling into a regular pattern to match the task at hand. This ancient African call and response chant is the core of the Blues, found both in African American church pulpits (an elevated platform or high reading desk used in preaching or conducting a worship service), and antebellum (existing before the Civil War) plantations;
4 – W.C. Handy was the first trained musician to capture the sounds of Blues on paper. In 1909, Handy penned the first written Blues song “Mr. Crump Blues” in the Pee Wee’s Saloon on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennesse. . . .
5 – “If you wants to know about the Blues, you got’s to go back to the church” — Muddy Waters –;
6 – “We were always singing in the fields. Not real singing, you know, just hollerin’, but we made up our songs about things that was happenin’ to us at the time, and I think that’s where the Blues started” — Son House –. . . .”
—Harry’s Blues Lyrics Online, blueslyrics.tripod.com, updated December 17, 2000.
this impression
“Was it not youth, the feeling he experienced now, when, coming out to the edge of the wood again from the other side, he saw in the bright light of the sun’s slanting rays Varenka’s graceful figure, in a yellow dress and with her basket, walking with a light step past the trunk of an old birch, and when this impression from the sight of Varenka merged with the sight, which struck him with its beauty, of a yellowing field of oats bathed in the slanting light, and of an old wood far beyond the field, spotted with yellow, melting into the blue distance—His heart was wrung with joy.”
—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877, translated by Richar Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2000.
images and memories
“Beyond the snow-covered roof he could see an open-work cross with chains and rising above it the triangular constellation of the Charioteer with the bright yellowish Capella. He gazed first at the cross then at the star, breathed in the fresh, frosty air that steadily entered the room, and followed, as in a dream, the images and memories that arose in his imagination.”
—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877, translated by Richar Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2000.