the inspiration to make this came from Kaz, of course. i can remember on two occasions in the past mentioning that she should try making a real-life collage to be photographed. well, i was finally driven to do it myself. the differences in the types of collages (between how you normally make a collage and how this one was made) are that this 'work' holds a transient quality as far as the final product in being 2D when you print it or look at it on a computer screen and it doesn't have the textural elements of a paper collage, but the things used to make the 'work' were not altered and can be enjoyed in their original state over and over, and you can use objects you can't normally use in a 'flat' collage. it's a weird tradeoff because the textural feel of a collage is so important, and flattening it by making a photograph of assembled objects is a horrid idea towards the craft of collages i would suppose, but i do like the 'not altering things' part of it and you can use just about anything in your composition.

the 'above' image was taken with a sony cd400 4mp. the top one was the 83rd image taken with a canon eos 1ds mark 2 named Ophelia.

(project supervision by zero the cat.)

1) i picked up this 1800's steel lighter long ago from an antique shop. i think it was dated as 1813 or 1817. it has a little map etched into the front of it that's really neat. i took it on as a project to get it working again, and with a few hours of work and some hard to find supplies, it lights every time and it retains fluid pretty well.

2) some of the first decorations i purchased when i moved to charlotte, this is an iron coaster for a candle. there are two of these and two similar one's about my living room. i just love the design.

3) this shadow-ish object is a wooden catnip dispenser. it's shaped like a cookie jar - kind of a cylinder that's fat in the middle and has a cap. you fill it up and toss it somewhere around the house and they go crazy every time they find it, for weeks. this one's been in use since about 2002. i keep a container of catnip in the freezer and whenever i find this thing, i dump it out and refill it.

4) a gift from Kaz.

5) a reproduction of a worn out photograph of my grandfather. grandmother said, 'he always used to wear a hat. that's why his hair was messed up'. he was a nationwide truck driver at this time in his life, so wearing a suit and getting a picture taken was a real treat for grandmother. she loves this picture dearly and upon searching for and finding it one day, she asked if i could fix it. i did what i could, having help on the left side of his face from an online acquaintance.

6) i just love marbles. i could show you a thousand different one's and call them all my favorite. :G this is one of those. a transparent crystal blue that has the property of bending the sunlight to a single dot in the center when you hold it up in the air.

7) a band of silver. it fits on one of my pinkies. i think i've had that thing for just about ever. honest that it did used to fit my ring finger when i was younger.

8) the very special music box that plays 'greensleeves' that Kaz gave me. it's such a beautifully timeless song. when i got this thing in the post, i ran around the house holding it to things and listening to the resonance's.

9) that's the backside of my current wallet.

10) this is a wrapper for a piece of candy my mother's father gave to me around 1990, give or take a year or two. i used it as a bookmark when i first read the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. my grandfather always had the best candy.

11) on 2006.09.01 i didn't have a great camera, but i'd had the concept of this picture in my head for weeks and i did finally take one snap. while i was making this image, the 'blue heart' concept came to play when i was going surveying the house for things to add and i came across the picks.

12) one of a set of four silk drink coasters with unique designs that were purchased a few years back as a gift, but were later upgraded to another gift before they were given.

13) wrapping paper! cam you believe *someone* used this for wrapping paper in sending a gift to me?

14) a rose that was left in my car by mistake a year or more ago. i didn't spray or attempt to preserve it in any way, but strangely it still has beautiful colours. it just sits on a table in my living room. maybe zero's energy feeds it majikly somehow.

15) it's a helicopter. least that's what we called em when we were kids. it's a seed from a tree and you can grab a handful and toss them up and watch them twirl in the wind. this one came from the appalachian mountains. it still works.

16) i've had this car since day one. it was a gift from my mother. you could pull it back and it would zoom across the room. it's made of metal. the engine can be seen by opening the back flap, and the whole roof of the seating compartment slides forward and opens. it's still a neat toy to me. maybe that was just my time.

17) marbles, a stick, rings and things that are special to me. this box cover (#22) was made from a 18th century floor tile from a japanese dwelling.

18) three more 'favorite' marbles! one of them has my initials on it.

19) seashells that my aunt picked up for me on a trip to the beach. :G she lives at the beach. one year, as a gift for xmas, she took a solid-foam cone and hot-glued shells all around it and put a starfish on the top with a green toothpick - she called it a florida christmas tree. i've still got that thing.

20) two very special rings that Kaz gave me. the one on the left is the one with the inscription on the inside and the other is the superstar one.

21) my favorite's from the bags of seashells and things i gathered in topsail beach. the mini conch in the bottom right is from the collection in #19, being misplaced in this image, just mingling, i suppose.

22) the top of the box from #17.

23) the bag of collected sand that i cleaned off all the shells i gathered from my topsail beach trip.

24) a piece of assembled bamboo that wasn't used in part of a gift that's being made for Kaz's birthday in 2007...

25) several years ago i wanted to be able to solve a rubix and i purchased this one. my attack pattern was to choose a top side and call it row one (R1), solve it's corners with pattern A, solve it's centers with pattern B; move to R2, solve corners with PatC, centers with PatD... when i got to R3, i tried for months and months, but i never could figure out the two patterns i needed. barely of consequence, but just to note, i angled the cube in this image to show my three favorite colours.

26) this is where i used to burn incense. the sticks always fell over or the ash got everywhere. i ended up finding two wine bottles that have holes cut in the bottom side. i wind a stick of incense into a key ring and i put it down into the bottle so that the ring keeps the end of the stick, sticking out of the top. dust in, smoke comes out, no worries of fire.

27) a match book that i picked up at the flying saucer pub in columbia, south carolina on 2004.02.14. i was down there visiting some friends.

28) my mother's father game me this imperial (brand) yo-yo when i was really young. it still has the same string on it and it still comes back up.

29) the removed rubix. would that be called a rubi? :G

30) this piece of tinfoil used to be wrapped around a very delicious lindt chocolate bunny. he died for a good cause.

31) janis randomly gives me neat little gifts. she bought me a few sets of these little magnetic bars and metal spheres. you can make some neat geometric-type things with them.

32) a very, very special part of Kaz's 2007 birthday...

unseen items: there are two items that didn't make it into the picture frame very visibly but can be seen easily in the 'above' picture. i found out that when you're taking a picture of something so close and you're using an ultra wide-end lense, then you don't get the exact truth of what the cmos is going to record vs what you see through the lense. it cuts off the top just a little. imagine that. the wrist band from the last grassroots festival is under items 3 & 4, and an untaken polaroid from around 1988 is under objects 28-30.