I knew that my recent trips to the San Diego Wild Animal Park and Disneyland would produce some good collage material. I’ll add the new ones here and explain the process. BUT – disclaimer – these are just fast snapshots. I’ll scan them at home for true images.
Where the Wild Things Are
The background photo is I believe Beverly Drive; at any rate, it’s a street in Beverly Hills. All the animals are from the Wild Animal Park except the peacock, which is from Hart Park right here in Kern County. The little pool of water the elephants are standing in is from Pismo, and the “wing” at top left is peacock feathers.
So why this configuration? Sometimes I have to ask myself and I don’t have the answer. It just looks right and seems to balance. That’s like one of the ways good spellers know if they have the word spelled correctly – it looks right. I just know that recently my husband and I were in Beverly Hills and as we made a slight turn on this street, I knew I had to have that perspective, that curve of perfect palm trees. So I grabbed the camera and shot. I had to photoshop the picture quite a bit to get off all the spots from the windshield!
The lineups of animals makes no sense except that I was going for a kind of vee shape with the elephants and giraffe meeting the palms, and the other lineup of animals also meeting. Would you find these animals in Beverly Hills? Well, this is part of the Altered Landscapes series, and in wealthy Beverly Hills, full of Hollywood types, I suppose you could find anything you wanted.
Savannah Queen
The background image for this picture was another “must have” shot. I was in a balloon at the Wild Animal Park, 400 feet in the air, and looked down to see this wonderful photo of palm trees and their shadows. I knew immediately I’d like it, and I’ll use it again in a collage keeping it sparser so the trees and shadows show better. This one was supposed to be that way but sometimes these things take on lives of their own.
So we have flowers – from Butchart Gardens in Victoria, from Paonia in Colorado, from a visitor center in Utah, and from the Getty Villa in Malibu. And I mustn’t forget the venus flytrap from the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena. The white bird sitting on top of her “throne” was in the garden shop at the Wild Animal Park. I was shopping with my daughter and grandkids when we heard someone laughing at us. We looked around to find out it was this bird! He made us laugh, and in turn he laughed, and we laughed even harder. Laughter rules! The rhino and the cheetah are paying homage. The rhino is paying homage because he is a sorry beast, but the cheetah is only doing it because it is expedient at the moment. The cheetah has his own agenda.
And that brings me to a special and unexpected moment this morning. As I was cutting out the cheetah, it was as if I could feel his power, the compact tension and strength in his muscles. I felt “catness” as I cut. I don’t know quite how to explain how I can become one with the animal I am cutting out, since it’s never happened before. And with the rhino, again I felt the animal. I felt his stupidness, his droopiness, his lack of purpose. And from then on, I felt nothing from any of the other images I cut out today. Not even the elephants. Well, maybe a little with the elephants. I love elephants. But really, I love cats, big and little, the most.
See
Terrible photo, but when I do these I am at the cabin and have no scanner. I forgot my tripod so couldn’t get a good, steady photo. But this is an obvious play on words. I took the background image through the porthole in the submarine ride at Disneyland. The mama and baby belugas are from the Vancouver Aquarium, and the seal is from my dad’s collection of old metal wind-up toys. And my cats are resting on that whatever it is supposed to be.
This collage is just for fun. There doesn’t always have to be a reason.
[...] 21 People at Disneyland is a new chapter – and finally, something I guess I didn’t blog about, the Roar and Snore. I took the grandkids to a sleepover at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and it was such incredible fun that I should blog about it – but now, just take my word. Here’s a post talking about some collages I made from those experiences. [...]