PART 1: Responses to Portrait of an American Family

    The response to each album that you are about to see may or may not be what Manson was trying to communicate.  What I discovered while listening to Manson’s music is that my mind was remembering things that I’ve seen and heard and felt that terrified me.  I’m in the habit of suppressing what I feel in an attempt to stay in control of myself.  No matter how much I’ve learned about life, I still can’t let that go.  And here comes Marilyn Manson, with a scalpel, cutting into my soul and forcing me to look at and recover what has been buried into the deepest recesses of my being.  These collages are abstract representations of what I uncovered.

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“A Hole in the Wall” - 04.19.20

In my first collage, the response was to Manson’s interpretive performance to the boat ride scene from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971). It was a very surreal scene, and Manson’s interpretation was equally creepy. Throughout each work, I would close my eyes, listen to the music, and allow things to come to me.  It might begin as textures, colors, or forms, and then some memory would come back to me.  This one is about my father threatening to punch my mother and then punching the wall by her face instead.  It was an old house with thin walls, so sometimes he punched holes in the wall.

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“Behind the Closed Door” - 02.28.20

Inspired by “Cake and Sodomy”

My home was chaos, so most of my works will reflect that in some form or another.  I used string from an old pair of pants to indicate how tangled up everything felt.  The orange trimmed rectangle in the center represents a door. There is an ear.  Things are not heard but subconsciously understood.  Text is conversation kept at a distance, as this conversation is meant to detract and block children from something terribly wrong that they’re too young to understand.  Although difficult to see, if you look closely, there are three children outside of the door. 

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“Strike Three, The War is Over” - 02.28.20

Inspired by “Lunchbox”

The hand grabs onto something that is not a weapon, but a stabilizing element.  The text is a lecture from someone who is more robot than human.  The black is the incessant pain caused by frequent bullying and cruelty.   I use yellow to indicate youth or playfulness,  Notice that it is being contaminated by other colors.  The pink implies the presence of a person.  In this case it is someone swelling with pride because they’re bullying tactics are working.

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“The Roar Has Been Silenced” – 04.06.20

Inspired by “Organ Grinder”

There are eyes in this one.  They are intense and piercing.  The yellow blob of childhood innocence is frayed and broken.  The text is a convoluted mess.  The figure in pink, bottom, just right to the center is crying, unable to understand.  There are other pink presences nearby, watching, although this story takes place in solitude.  There was always watching but nothing ever changed.  There are blue smudges on the right edge.  There was an attempt by another on a different day to sooth the situation.  On the rare moments that it worked, it was temporary.      
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“Programming Deconstructed” – 04.06.20

Inspired by “Cyclops”

The pants zipper represents a blindfold that eventually gets removed.  Notice a pair of eyes emerging among the scattered remains of text.  Imagine picking up puzzle pieces over a period of many years, but it takes a long time before you get enough pieces to start connecting them.  Life is like that.  Wisdom comes later.  The moment you realize you’ve been programmed like a computer your entire life, a door is unlocked.  It’s up to you to open it and walk over to the other side, where the thinkers live.  Of all the collages I did for Portrait of an American Family, this is my favorite.
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“The Neighbors Will Hear” – 04.19.20

Inspired by “Dope Hat”

We all saw something was very wrong, but I didn’t have the courage to stand up to the abuse.  The pink face on the top half is two people in one, it can be seen in two ways: 1) Someone trembling and behind the wall, and 2) Someone with courage emerging from behind the wall.  The jagged pieces at the bottom are the nosy neighbors, enjoying our predicament.  Wads of string is always a reflection of chaos and being tangled up on the inside.  There is a large strip of yellow trimmed with denim.  It has rough edges or fraying.  The youth behind the wall are slowly being torn apart by hostility and violence.  The text is a mess of confusion as there is no true communication in this place—only words.  The splash of blue is the tiny remnants of hope that there is a better life yet to come.

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“There’s a Storm Outside, but There’s a Map Behind the Door” – 04.19.20

Inspired by “Get Your Gunn”

The denim strips in this piece indicate the floor and shelving above it.  The large, dark rectangle between them is a sliding door.  There is yellow aligned with the denim.  The children feel safe here.  The adults can’t fit.  They imagine it to be a special protective place designed for frightened children.  Everything outside of the protective space is all volatile.  It is a mixture of a thunderstorm and the general presence of hatred and bitterness that never left.

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“Glowing Idiocy” – 04.25.20

Inspired by “Wrapped in Plastic”

The pink in the center represents fake security.  Text emerges from the idiot box in the form of old TV antennas.  We are programmed by the fakeness, believing it to be something attainable.  The rough, motley assembly of denim is a carelessness that existed in the space.  No one notices what is real.  We don’t want to face what is real.  We want to live in fantasy.  We gobble up the dialogue of the fakeness and allow it to infect our beings with mental blindness.  Mainstream society is like a disease that kills original thought and individuality.  But once your eyes are opened to it, it cannot be unseen.

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“When are You Going to Get Baptized?” – 04.25.20

Inspired by “Dogma”

God is real.  Just because there are too many people misrepresenting the message of the Bible, that doesn’t invalidate it, it only invalidates the person spreading the misconceptions.  The white in the corner is God’s word of truth.  The figure knows that it’s important but doesn’t understand it.  Her mind isn’t ready for it.  But there’s so much pressure.  The black is the pressure and the strings are the confusion.  The pink are the gaping smiles of churchgoers.  But these aren’t just happy people.  They are the product of programming and don’t know anything other than the smiling, because that’s what they’re supposed to do.  

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“She’s Too Young to Understand” – 04.26.20

Inspired by “Sweet Tooth”

The eyes are in the television.  They’re dead.  The frayed denim is a nasty, shag carpet.  The red is caution and danger.  There are indications of a gable roof.  A darkness always hovered over it—the type of darkness that can be felt rather than seen.  There are scratches and claw marks of fear and desperation.  There’s a yellow nose seen in profile (innocence destroyed) with a stream of blood coming out of it, forming the outline of a breast.  Dialogue is coming from one side but is mostly ignored by the main occupant of the room.  There is a small amount of pink to the right side.  There is a blob of pink innocence being quickly overtaken by the danger.

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“Stolen Items” – 04.19.20

Inspired by “Snake Eyes and Sissies”

There’s a verbal explosion of many angry people.  Young, innocent eyes are seeing things they shouldn’t.  The inside is a mess both physically and emotionally.  A swirling pink mass of confusion as young eyes are programmed to see things that are wrong.  Later there will be understanding of wrong doing.  That light shines behind the mess, like conviction from God.  He sees all and knows all.

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“After the Ice Cream Truck” – 04.27.20

Inspired by “My Monkey”

There are elements of an outdoor play space for children, and a concrete porch where we enjoy goodies from the ice cream truck.  It’s a hot, summer day.  It’s beautiful outside, but the ugliness in the families continues to thrive.  There’s a tree to the right.  It’s drippy and dream-like.  The building to the left is broken, like the families themselves.  Again, strings are confusion and chaos in the children’s minds.

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“We Trusted MTV?” – 04.27.20

Inspired by “Misery Machine”

The colors and makeup are implied but not completely filled in.  The women are incomplete.  They are beautiful on the outside but hollow on the inside.  They perform well, like trained animals, to properly exude raw sexuality.  There is no shame on mindless recitals of dehumanization.  The pretty face is in the center, and other versions of her spiral around, like a domino effect.  The dominoes are self-respect and sense of individuality.  And they all fall down for the grand show.
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