Exploring our world through the prism of surrealistic imagery and written opinion with a critical eye towards themes in Western media; striving against instincts to deprive my body (having long followed anorexic tendencies); embracing life's quirky facets and beautiful imperfections ...with a great deal of glue.
ABOVE: a vintage Sesame Street riff of Madonna's 1984 hit "Material Girl"
BELOW: frenzied collage art by me, using 1940s baking advertisements, my own prints of Lucky Charms cereal and a 30-year-old "My Little Pony" softcover picture book, glazed with Mod Podge
"My Little Scone-ies (and other magically delicious breakfast delights)"
12 in. x 19 in. paper assemblage art on painted canvas with poetry on back & rainbow wash tape along sides, assembled during Eating Awareness Week (February 26-March 4, 2018) and dedicated to Walden Behavioral Care
4' x 3' abstract canvas from March 2015 that I updated with changes to the lower right this September
3' x 2' companion piece
"Chef BoyarDior" -- 31" x 8" mixed media collage (September 2017)
"Oats For Women" -- 16" x 8" mixed-media collage of magazine paper, acrylic house paint, raw oatmeal, and Modge Podge (November 2017 with upper detail added June 2019)
The first and only pencil drawing I've made in at least a decade, based on a photograph of my sister's infant boy, who's marvelous.
Eight o'clock on a New England summer night, from what could have easily been swapped for a landscape by LINDEN FREDERICK, currently my favorite modern painter (whose Night Stories I saw in person on my birthday at CMCA).
The peach-haired and dimpled daughter of a close friend from high school. She wears a ruffled dress I gave her on the day she turned four years old. As I type this now her family awaits the birth of a sibling. I didn't take this picture but I admire the repeated mustard colors!
One of my mother's summer lilies, August 8th (as captured by my iPhone 6s with Instagram filter effects).
My nephew Elias in Owls Head two days before he turned sixteen months old (September 4, 2017). This was his first beach walk on our American shores.
"Cottony" cobwebs angled off a stone perimeter catch late-day sunlight (September 23, 2017)
Light on our streets arranges itself in the shapes I like to use in abstract art (September 29, 2017)
Deceased common startling encountered on a walk to the boatyard (October 2, 2017)
Marbled veins of pomegranate were revealed upon prying off an "eggnog" batch of floor paint (October 19, 2017) -- Can you spot the projects I used it in?
Sundown on October 16, 2017 at quarter-to-six (Thomaston, Maine)
Brown bat encountered on Halloween Day (!) in our back hallway, promptly relocated to my mother's patio planter.
Dollops & smears of paint on clear plastic with shadows beneath (November 2, 2017)
---- MEASURING THE BREADTH OF A YEAR ---- CREATIVE IMAGERY IN RANDOM FREEFALL, 2015-2016 For more, please visit my Instagram feed: @lorenastackpole
AUTUMN 2015
Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel...
Flowers sampled from my mother's garden
Was the sound of distant drumming just the fingers on your hand?
Deceased squirrel with lavender sprigs (supplied by me)
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space...
"Golden hour" pre-sunset colors cast against the side of a church vestry
WINTER 2015
Half-remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?
Self-portrait in cashmere turban & faux-fur
Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head...
Peanut's doppleganger (a surprise stuffed "twin" for the Pomeranian I dogwalk -- I furnished both with the red holiday bows)
Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own...
Handmade Christmas cards -- two different versions (front & back)
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon...
New Year's Eve along East 8th Street, NYC (above my head)
Like a door that keeps revolving in a half-forgotten dream...
New Year's Eve along East 8th Street, NYC (below my feet)
SPRING 2016
Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone...
"The Real O'Neals" debuts on ABC -- worth acknowledging because it features a rare male character, Jimmy, who proclaims to suffer from an eating disorder -- a detail abandoned after the premiere episode (above, a magazine promo page bathed in sunlight)
"It's important to acknowledge how the performance of manhood can be restrictive, and in many cases, harmful. Jimmy feels constrained by his role as a champion wrestler, so he wants out. This would've been the perfect time to revisit his anorexia, but once again, there was no mention of it. It's safe to say that detail has been abandoned — Eileen cured him with Jesus pancakes or something [by the end of the pilot] — and that is a missed opportunity. It's tough to make light of an eating disorder, so maybe it's best that it was abandoned. Nevertheless, it would've fit perfectly with Jimmy confronting the idea of what a man is supposed to look like."
Never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel...
VIDEO, may not play on all systems -- "Stir of Shadows" (agitated branches cast their movements against our home's exterior) Lovers walk along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand...
Collage box with ModPodge glaze for my sister, themed around her screenplay "Ye Deep", set on Nantucket Island
SUMMER 2016
Like the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream...
Photograph by Erica Shires of me on the rocks of coastal Maine at sunrise (vintage prom dress chosen & procured by me)
Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song...
Another portrait by Erica, in a '40s-era antique nightgown with my mother's globe thistle
When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware...
A fallen finch, laid to rest with morning/mourning glories
AUTUMN 2016
That the autumn leaves were turning to the color of his hair?
Treeline "halo" bordering one side of our Maine property
Why did summer go so quickly? Was it something that you said?
"Ayam Cemani" (black glossy enamel over chalkboard paint base with sequins, smashed sunglasses lenses affixed with ModPodge on 26" x 36" antique canvas)
As the images unwind...
(Untitled on 11" x 13" canvas, with same materials as first work)
(Detail from mixed-media art shown above)
Like the circles that you find...
Errant pompom blossom, in swirls of shadows on concrete -- an effective punctuation until my next entry
