Constructions have been a central part of my work for more than 25 years.
Sometimes they begin when I find an unusual box, like in Clean Thinking and Piggy Banker. More often, it is a unique object that inspires me to get to work,
like in Augustus Ugotus, star chamber and my new series—Crayon nation.
Speculation
Illumination
Configuration
Irritation
Crayon Nation Series
I found the women’s portrait years ago attached to a canvas in very bad condition. I found the man’s portrait at Stonehouse Antiques amongst a collection of frames. I did not know the history behind these photographic images until working on this series and trying to find more — what would I search for? They are called crayon portraits and are a combination of a photograph and a drawing. Many were made by using a solar enlarging camera that generated a weak but large image on 16” x 20” canvas or paper. Developed in the sun, it was then touched up and augmented with crayon among other mediums. These were the first "life-sized" photographic images that were affordable and available for portraiture from roughly 1860 to the early 1900s.
Crayon Nation may be viewed at Pucker Gallery.
FlightHouse
For 10 years this tall box sat on the counter of my studio with the tall sneering man placed inside. Later I added the smaller blue figure. They stayed this way until 2021 when I decided to pull the tall man out and make him part of the frame. I found in my scrap collection a Britannica Encyclopedia page of lighthouses from the 1800s which I scanned and distorted. I then added birds mounted on the back of mica and very tiny blue glass balls to role in the sand below.
WATCH the step by step process of making my Flighthouse construction.
“ I particularly admired the little animation of how Babs’ tall man box came together. This was an excellent artist talk for the Covid era. ””
RED APPLE
Red Apple started with both an old photo of a teacher and a young boy and a wonderful old box. The project sat unfinished, waiting for something to happen. Then, one September morning, I noticed the red leaves on our Tupelo tree were spotted with tiny holes and portions had been skeletonized by rainwater.
I collected a few before they had a chance to decompose, glazed each leaf with encaustic wax to give them strength and then coated them with gold powder. I found a perfect frame, but it was two inches too tall. Rather than cut the frame, I added a second box to the bottom and created a basement below what had become a classroom above.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. — Aristotle
AUGUSTUS UGOTUS, CITIZENS UNITED
Along an unpopulated stretch of a Berkshire mountain road I spotted a broken down trailer surrounded by weary looking furniture, some cardboard boxes full of who-knows-what, and a FOR SALE sign. A double row of chairs funneled me to a old trunk full of detritus that looked promising for box construction. The dark haired, mustachioed man sitting in the open door of the trailer seemed to have the unshakable belief that his broken toys were priceless antiques. When I turned to walk away, I noticed an unclothed doll sitting on one of the chairs. Had he been there before? I asked the price. The man grumbled. "Five bucks.” When I got back to our cabin, my son and husband took one look at the clown and refused to let him inside.
No Cash Value
As part of a story for National Geographic on Cotton, my husband, Cary, and I spent a day photographing at the Crane Paper Company in Dalton, MA. At the time, Crane not only made the paper for the US Treasury, but they also received and recycled the old paper money. They had a hay bail of cash—estimated to be about $20,000— shredded into tiny strips. Hence—No Cash Value. We tried to photograph the bail, but the natural light in the factory kept changing dramatically. So they gave us the bail to bring home.
Piggy Banker
Piggy Banker started with this unusual clock case that reminded me of a late19th century bank. When if found the rubber squeaky doll of the proud pig, the construction quickly came together—painting the blue sky, attaching a few tiny pigs, and replacing the flat glass window with a dome.
Meeting at the Garden
This box construction was a study using encaustic wax. Sculpting the wax on top of flower photos gave them a three dimensional look. But I did not realize how hard it would be to manipulate the heating iron between the partitions of this silverware drawer.
Planting
Planting was a bit easier to control.
Clean thinking
The mirror was long gone when I found this box. I filled it with many images of women glued to the underside of thin pieces of mica. When I first exhibited this construction, someone decided to take Mr. Clean. But at Christmas that year, my son presented me with a new one he found on eBay—a sad story with a very good ending.
SUNDREAMS
Making box constructions started when I was twelve. A friend showed me how to make LITTLE PEOPLE with cork heads and pipe cleaner bodies. We made hair from thread and clothing from felt and used anything we could find to decorate them. They needed a home so my friend and I built a school using wooden cigar boxes laid flat and popsicle stick ladders to connect each classroom. There were more than 40 dolls including students, teachers and a school principal. We won “best of show” at the annual West Hartford doll show.
DEAD STUCK
Years later I started making the same dolls but with clay heads. I took the dolls on the road with me and gave them away as gifts. But the ones that came home needed safe storage spaces, so I started making boxes using other objects from our travels.
The little person in DEAD STUCK is Mostyn Watkins, named after a farmer we met in the Forest of Dean in England. He is holding a dried clematis and a basket that holds a green June Beetle found along the hedgerows in Cornwall. Behind him are funerary objects I picked from the trash in Kyoto, Japan. The wooden box has “Dead Stuck for Bugs” stamped into the outside surface.
Star Chamber
When Cary introduced me to making constructions—he and another artist, Frank Richardson, had made boxes while living in Marblehead, MA—I was already a big fan of Joseph Cornell’s work.
One of the pieces that came from Cary’s collection was the wax head of a jester. It sat for years on a shelf above my workspace waiting for the right box. When I brought this 5 inch square box home from a flea market, everything came together—in a single afternoon. My lady is sweeping away a star.
Deliver Me
Jerusalem—the intersection of religions and greed.
