Creative Process

I think of the Jell-O Art Show as the first heralding of spring, the beginning of the art year. The season came early this year, in nature, and in Jell-O, when I got everything out and made the piece for MKAC and gave it to them on January 31st.  That broke my usual routine so the past month has not been so much about making Jell-O Art as about other things. I've been having a lot of strange dreams, though, so some force is working its way out from deep in there.

I've always liked my Jell-O Art pieces to be about my life, the progress of the past year or a direction I seem to be going. Once I observed that I had a creative process, I started to write about it and follow the whims. I often began with going to the as-is Goodwill to search for something interesting to use for a prop. I like the use of props to frame the Jell-O, and help to get the message across. Jell-O itself is notoriously hard to work with, if you have control in mind. It jiggles out of your arrogant boundaries and melts itself out of your plans. Often when I found the object, a whole new idea began to emerge.

I'm thinking of the copper-fronted pink breadbox. That year I was heavy into remodeling my house. I had used Fish-head Barbie for many years and that year she was remodeling the breadbox, in her little carpenter's apron and with her foot in a bucket of white gelatin plaster. I made little shingles and boards, lots of Jell-O details, and I put it on the pedestal I usually used, which is a set of legs that I can dress. Somewhere on the internet is a photo of it which I will try to find. (Alas, most of the old photos are gone, displaced by young people drinking shots, taking selfies.)

I used Fish-head Barbie as my alter ego until she fell apart one year. She was just a Barbie doll with the head of a fish, which symbolized me, a woman with a pretty hot body (remember, I was in my thirties when we started Jell-O Art) but a very different mindset. I was more than just a feminist, I was a radical. All that fades into my past but I still like to find a personal hook to build my art piece around.

Some years I stopped using a lot of props and simplified the process to focus more on the Jell-O itself. I began to try to find a new technique to try, as a challenge. The dried version is quite fascinating, but I like to work with molds, too, using lots of plastic containers and odd items to put the gelatin in. I made a lot of molds with wax or clay, though I didn't have much luck with real mold-making art materials. One year I made a rubber mold from an AR-15 (yes, an assault rifle) and buried the Jell-O from it in the ground in a coffin-shaped box. That was a peace statement of course. I made bullets and dressed the legs in camoflage. Something about a melting Jell-O gun delighted me.

Themes are a good start, but if the theme of the year didn't inspire me, I felt free to go beyond it. The personal was always my area of work. If I had something romantic going in my life, my Jell-O was lovely or cynical (usually cynical). One year I tried to make a mold of my face, and the theme was a Wizard of Oz one, so half the face was pink and flowery and the other was green and witchy with frogs. The title was something like "Are you a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?" A fun discovery was made by getting away from the t-shirt table and finding out that people actually discussed my Jell-O, trying to see my intent and understand my statement. Who knew it was really art? It took me forever to take it that seriously myself.

I like the Odyssey theme. It's very open. My dreams have been rather haunting this week, all featuring a boyfriend from the earliest days who dumped me eventually, saying "You'll thank me," despite my complete devotion to him. Naturally he was right but I wonder why he is back now. A dream I had when I was living with him was that Steve Martin came to town and wanted me to go off with him. He was willing to give up his career for me (this was in the King Tut days). I took that to mean that I was meant for a much better life than the one I was in. Now in the dreams I am again trying to get away from that boyfriend, usually on foot. One dream had me looking in vain for my shoes, but determined to walk home anyway, on a hot dirt road many miles from here. My son was with me in that one, at varying ages, but a companion and protector as well as someone I was taking care of. In another I was wishing I could take his child with me (he had a son, though it was a decade before I did.) This tells me about the contrast between real caring love and love for someone untrue. I'm ready to abandon all my possessions in these dreams, to strike out on my own, strong and independent just like I was in those days. Another had me parking my old cars in my storage room, and wondering how on earth I still had them and how I would get rid of them. Last night I was packing up some photographs and letters, but I didn't seem to have any furniture or clothes to take with me. One dream featured one of those large Victorian houses with all the staircases and little rooms upon rooms, filled and cramped, and me climbing up and down trying to get out, to find the bathroom or the attic, or sometimes a shortcut through the house to finish my journey. I used to think houses were relationships, but now I think I am dreaming about my life. I think I am exploring making choices when I feel that things are happening to me without my choice. I'm having to sign up for Medicare, do my taxes, go to a lot of meetings, and fly off to Australia. I may feel forced to let go of control, explore on my own, get back to the brave young me who would take on such a difficult lover and then not want to let go. I'm dreaming of the Odyssey I've been on, the interminable journey, but I'm the one making the decisions about where I'm going, and it's always to my own home, my safety, and my right to be me. I enjoy the Victorian rooms filled with the interesting objects of other people's lives, but I want to get out and walk in the grass and the woods. By myself. Free.


If I can follow this out, it might make for a fascinating piece of Jell-O Art. I'd better go off to the As-is store.