The Locusts: The Evolution of a Collage ( 1/8/11)

A true and verifiable Story told and illustrated by the artist,
Mary Boxley Bullington

The Locusts, a mixed media collage of papers painted and scribbled with acrylic, gesso, charcoal, and oil pastel on rag board, 26 1/4" x 29 1/4." Created July 1-Oct. 1, 2010.

Genesis
July 1, 2010:

'Twas was midsummer, traditionally a time of relative leisure and gaiety.

I started on a new collage in my studio.
The Locusts were to be a fun piece in a "bug" series," designed to be shown in a gallery window in mid-July.

The Locusts, ca. July 4, 2010.

The first phase (above) was finished in a few days. I just needed to paint in a more cheerful background color, and the collage would be done.

But NO!--I didn't like the bug eyes. Maybe they were too much the same. Or maybe I just didn't like the piece itself.

After all, summer 2010 was a dismaying time. In April, soon after the Haitian earthquake and the eruption of the volcano in Iceland, the Gulf of Mexico exploded with a massive oil spill that threatened to inundate even the Atlantic Ocean. We were told in May--pretty accurately, as it turned out-- would take until August to contain the spill, which is still in the process of being cleaned up and investigated. Thousands of people's livelihoods in Louisiana and Mississippi looked to be wiped out.

Anyway, I didn't like the bugs' dern eyes. So I started experimenting. Got out my box of human eyes and tried one set after another. No dice. They were almost all too small. So began ferreting through the crate of human heads (and other body parts) I keep under a table in my smaller studio.

The Locusts, second phase, mid-July.

So I started experimenting. Got out my box of human eyes and tried one set after another. No dice. They were almost all too small. So began ferreting through the crate of human heads (and other body parts) I keep under a table in my smaller studio.

Revelations
I gave them human faces from my stockpile of heads and such. (I'd had this King's face at least 2-3 years). I also toyed with the idea of giving the king human hands--two fateful decisions that changed the entire tenor of the work.

I knew from my studies as a medievalist the reference to medieval hybrids I was suddenly working with. This was literally an apocalyptic synthesis--

--it was a team of composite creatures related directly to the 8th chapter of Revelations--and to the Spanish illuminations of that chapter I had pored over for years. I had titled one of chapter heads in my dissertation "And the Shapes of the Locusts Were like unto Horses . . ."

(For a wonderful image of some 1oth century Locusts in illuminations to the Spanish Beatus Apocalypse, Google http://rpmedia.ask.com/ts?u=/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/B_Valladolid_120.jpg/95px-B_Valladolid_120.jpg)


Third phase: I fitted Queen Locust with a sad, pretty face--
I loved this face, but it wasn't menacing enough to be the countenance of an Apocalyptic Locust. Anything but--

The Locusts, approaching end of phase 2: Queen Locust acquires a jester's face. This didn't seem right, either.

So I went into my other studio where I was working on a different collage--

From my larger studio July 2010: an early, unglued stage of the small work soon to become "Centrifugal Family"--

The face center left was pointed in exactly the right direction to be cut out and transposed to the queen locust.
But she was pretty friendly. Some acrylic mixed with gesso would change that!


The Locusts, phase 3: The queen locust with the new face I'd harvested from the grouping of ladies I'd been set to collage.

But of course, if I removed the lady on the left, 'twould mean I had to rework the smaller collage--
and so I did--

Completely.
This collage became "Centrifugal Family." The semicircles under the red paint are all that remain of the lady is the blue hat. That's the beauty of collage.

Meanwhile, I was still tweaking the locusts' bodies--especially the legs, bellies, and wings.

Apocalypse Now.

Pretty soon, I thought I was set--the queen had a new face, and I'd painted the background a nice shade of yellow.
I was finished!

But when I took it out of my studio and set it up so I could look at it for a day, I saw that it was too crowded, and worse, the king locust looked very familiar, disturbingly so.

King Locust resembled, oh dear--he was--

Osama bin Locust!

Not exactly the kind of bug you want to put in a gallery window in downtown Roanoke, Virginia in the middle of a very hot summer.

What to do?
Well, first, I had to paint a whole newline-up of male heads. And iIf I didn't want them to look like Osama, I would need a more conscious reference. Classical, I thought. Jupiter! I painted a series of Zeuses and threw in a couple of Dionyses for good measure, then chopt them up and masked and re-masked until I had one

I thought might do.
At the same time, I started experimenting with larger backgrounds.

The Locusts, 8/7/10.

But pretty soon
Zeus Locust began to bother me.
He looked a bit diffident--kind of like Colin Firth before
he conquers his stammer in "The King's Speech."

OK. I gave him some sharp teeth--and made his eyebrows madder.
You get the idea.)

My neighbor Molly came over: "That's scary," she said.
The teeth

had to go.

But, oh dear, by this time, I had used up all my Greek godheads.
I went rooting around again through old stuff and came up with

NO--
I came up with
an enormous human head with enormous charcoal eyes.


He was much too yaller
(took no picture, so you'll have to magine the skin here to be a fine pale yellow ochre)
and much, much too big.
But never mind, I liked his eyes.

So I chopt the head into 2 or 3 sections, trimming brow and cheeks, and cut chin
almost completely off. Then I squushed the pieces back together again. The distortion
was good. It made the face look

rather --determined.
I glued it down and painted it red.

Finally, I cut the locusts off their background sheet so I could give them the scorpion tails with their not quite deadly stings specified in Revelations 8:

--the Queen's tail--

-- and the King's Tail.

The bugs were almost done.
I greened the King's eyebrows and gave him blue burns
& a blue goatee .

But fair is fair.
I gave the queen

a new coiffure.

Then
glued them in the center of a nice red-brick patio--

--and finally, October 1, 2010, The Locusts were done.


--MBB, Roanoke, VA
1/11/11