Mâché Creations

There is something beautiful about discarded paper -- newspapers, old memos and reports, magazines, catalogs...it doesn't really matter. I see things there that most people probably don't see -- dragons, turtles, giraffes, fish, castles, and characters of all sorts. It is my job to bring them to life so others can see them. I have named my studio (a loose term given to describe any place where I happen to be creating) Mâché Creations.

Here is a sampling of what's going on in the studio these days: from the magic of chips of paper, to the creatures arising out of them.

It all begins here...with paper. Big sheets torn repeatedly, or cut into tiny pieces with scissors, until I have the raw material to begin shaping into what my head visualizes (but not entirely...the paper has a will of its own and comprimises must continually be made).

This is tedious work, but the results are even beautiful before the process of gluing pieces of paper together begins. Shapes and sizes and colors yield an appealing texture that never ceases to thrill and fascinate me.

I need a variety of sizes. The smallest pieces -- about 1/8 of an inch -- are for forming more precise shapes. I have returned to a process of gluing pieces of paper together, one by one, and working the shape as I go. Everything I do is freehand. I go from the paper chips you see to the eventual shapes using only the air for an armature. The only exceptions are the occasional rolled tube that establishes the form of a leg or arm on a creature. Dragons are my favorite subjects, and I have a variety of characters in the works.

In the rising menagerie are fish and turtles, giraffes (not pictured), and a variety of dragons. There are many other creatures abiding in my mind waiting to get out and express themselves into form.

I love the graceful curves of dragons' necks. Just wait until you see them with wings and ears. After I have them basically formed in this manner, I will take paper pulp made in the blender and kneaded together with glue, and with it cover the figures and sculpt the fine detail work. Previous work can be seen in an earlier blog post.

Stay tuned! I will be sharing more as the work on these projects progresses.

[Photos by Cris Bohannon]

Why Maché Artist?

A few years ago when I first got on the Internet, I noticed all these fascinating noms de guerre people had created for themselves… names like “Lips2Sweet4U” and “2L8_4myLuv” for the girls, which, once I thought about it, really made me feel pre-rejected by people I didn’t even know and whose lips I had no interest in anyway; or names like “superSTUD4babes” and “Guy2Hot2Handle” for guys with some serious superiority complexes, which, for some neurotic reason, made me feel surprisingly inferior. For a long time I humbly went by… well, Jim Bohannon. Nothing like using your real name to throw people off! There came a time, however – a fateful time – when I decided I should set up yet a second Yahoo! account, and since my real name was already taken and I was already having to use it with the number “1” attached to it, instead of going for Jim_Bohannon2 (and since “studmuffin879” was also already taken and I had little interest in trying to remember “studmuffin880”) I decided I’d call myself something that represented me to the core. So Maché_Artist it was (Maché is pronounced “mah-shay…some people have trouble figuring it out).

Why would any self-respecting, net-surfing e-mail hopper name himself after a French adjective that literally means “chewed up”? Simple. I love paper maché. When I was boy I discovered a recipe in The Family Book of Games, which I had gotten in an introductory package from Doubleday Book Club (which I had inadvertently forgotten to tell my mama I’d sent off for…but that’s another story). Well, I didn’t care much about soaking strips of paper in a galvanized washtub, boiling them down, and beating them to a pulp. I decided what I would do is tear newspaper (and we always had a stack) into tiny pieces and stick them together with glue made from flour and water. I used this method to make toys for myself. The first thing I made was a very detailed Lunar Excursion Model (LEM) which stood about 5 inches tall and actually came apart so I could both land on the moon and take off from it. The poor LEM – after dozens of landings on the dining room table (aka “the moon” – the white tablecloth was perfect), I hopped off the couch one afternoon forgetting about the lander, and it met with a cataclysmic force from my foot, rendering all future moon explorations unfeasible.

In later years I began to wonder if I could make art with this method, so I began gluing these pieces of paper together to make more detailed works, including an elephant complete with tusks and a long-neck, cartoonish turtle. As the years went by, I made various starts and stops with this art form until I decided to pulverize paper in a blender and mix it with flour and water to make a moldable mash. This worked very well, and my skill increased, until I had a bout with clinical depression and gave up art for a while. Recently I have returned to my passion for sculpting in paper mâché with the enthusiasm of a teenager who’s just discovered girls (maybe that’s a bad analogy, but you get the picture). I made a half-hearted attempt to do some things with clay, but it left me uninspired – and it also cracks very easily.

The problem with working in paper mâché, at least the method of building from scratch that I use, is it takes lots of time. Each meager stage of production has to dry completely before I go on, so keeping the motivation for major projects such as I have in progress now requires lots of patience – and it’s perfect for somebody with a short attention span, because I can work on a piece, then set it aside for days and work on something else. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, so it takes endurance, coupled with downright mule-headedness, to keep going. I've also had to change the recipe – I no longer use flour, because those same beetles that love breakfast cereal also love flour...even when it's mixed with pulverized paper. Now I use Elmer's glue, which makes an incredibly strong product when dry, and an incredibly sticky mess while in progress, but one must suffer for one's art.

Something that I really like about my art medium of preference is that I take trash (literally) and turn it into a work of art. There is something profound in that for me – it’s a metaphor, much like what I try to do in my other job as a teacher of inmates at a state prison. Where you see trash to be dropped off at the dump, I see dragons lifting their wings to fly, Civil War soldiers haggard from war, frogs playing musical instruments on lily pads, a country baseball pitcher in mid-windup, and…well, lots of possibilities.

So…I figured that would be the perfect “other name” for myself. How appropriate, because life has a way of leaving us mâché-ed (chewed up) and spit out, and I’m no exception. It’s just that I want to take the chewed-up experience and turn it into something beautiful – and if not exactly beautiful, at least a whole lot of fun!

[I've included a couple of pictures here – an older work (a dragon perched on a rock) and a piece in progress, Dragonlock Holmes, who will sport, when completed, a trenchcoat and the typical Sherlockian cap, and will hold a magnifying glass in one hand and a Calabash pipe in the other.]

What the world needs now is… imagination!

Quite a few decades ago Jackie DeShannon made famous a song penned by Hal David, with music by Burt Bacharach – “What the World Needs Now”.

Go ahead, sing it with me – “What the world needs now, is love sweet love, it's the only thing, that there's just too little of…” Who could disagree with that? I surely couldn’t. But – and forgive me for doing this – I want to change the lyrics for a moment. Ready? “What the world needs now, is imagination…” Sacrilege you say? Well, let me explain.

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine who teaches at Georgia College and State University invited me to come to her class to speak about and lead a discussion on Flannery O’Connor. Coincidentally, about that same time I was developing some thoughts on “imagination”. When I began my presentation to the class, I began by talking about imagination instead of Flannery O’Connor. I think my friend (the teacher) was a little stunned, until she realized where I was going with my thoughts. Let me share with you briefly how the subject of imagination came to me, and how my thoughts developed.

One long-running program on C-SPAN was Booknotes. In each episode Brian Lamb would interview a significant author, and the January 4, 2004, episode featured Brenda Wineapple discussing her book Hawthorne: A Life (a biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne). One of Hawthorne’s best friends was Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the United States, who was an adamant proponent of the institution of slavery. Lamb asked about Pierce, “Why was he pro-slavery?” To which part of Wineapple’s response was:

“Why was he pro-slavery in that way? I think because he lacked the imagination to think of what it really is to be a slave. You know, I mean, I think it was a real failure – it’s a failure of moral nerve and it’s a failure of imagination that comes to Pierce that he didn’t bother to think about it. He never got beyond the rule of law. So it wasn’t real to him.”

Ah… a failure of imagination.

About the same time, I read an interview in Sojourners magazine with author Wendell Berry. Addressing how separate local regions interact without becoming isolationist, he brought up the topic of imagination in a similar context:

“The serious question is whether you’re going to become a warrior community and live by piracy, by taking what you need from other people. I think the only antidote to that is imagination. You have to develop your imagination to the point that permits sympathy to happen. You have to be able to imagine lives that are not yours or the lives of your loved ones or the lives of your neighbors.” (Sojourners, July 2004)

What does this have to do with Flannery O’Connor, or any other serious fiction writer for that matter? Everything! Without imagination we cannot empathize; we cannot feel what other people, particularly people different from ourselves, feel. We are trapped in the narrowness of our own flesh, of the self-centered and preoccupied experience of our microscopic arena of existence, and there is no hope that we can become anything more or better. Imagination is the gift that allows us to break free from our shackles, to become truly human, truly real beings.

In this context, imagination is not an escape from reality; it is entering into the fullness of reality. The most significant thing about art, literature, and music is the contribution they make to our imagination. Art does not supersede the thoroughly practical existence; it brings the practical into its stunning fulness. As an example of this, I offer my father’s contention that my interest in growing flowers was a waste of time and effort. “You can’t eat a flower,” he said. Therefore, to him, it was useless. I replied, “If there were no flowers, there would be no reason to eat, no reason to exist. And even the beans and squash in the vegetable garden begin as flowers.” As the Bible says, we human beings “do not live by bread alone…” Or in another place, “where there is no vision, the people perish.” I could paraphrase with no loss of meaning, “Where there is no imagination, the people cannot live.”

In summary:
(1) Imagination is not an extraneous and frivolous part of our being – it is vital.
(2) Not only should imagination be encouraged, it should be nurtured in a positive way. That alone is justification for literature and the arts.

In the midst of war and terrorism, possibly more than ever, what the world needs now is… imagination. Hence, I invite you – come, imagine with me!

A Friendly Introduction

I've finally gone and done it! I've started a blog. I've been journaling for a good couple of decades, and from time to time I like to share some of my entries with family or friends. I figure this way I can share it with everybody. Even if you're a stranger, I'm sure we could be friends if we got to know one another.

I’ve got lots of stories to tell, and there are plenty of subjects I’d like to reflect on. My interests include, but are not limited to, family, music, art, literature, airplanes, my Taylor guitar, books, philosophy, theology & religion, beautiful sunsets, mathematics, Spanish, and… well, I could go on for a day or two. You can figure it out as we go along.

Let me tell you a little about myself. I’m Jim Bohannon (no, not the one that’s on the radio), and I live in Milledgeville, Georgia, with my wife, Cris, and my two youngest sons. I have another son and a daughter who are both grown and married. My daughter gave birth to our first grandchild on January, 30th, and my son and his wife are expecting in July… so you can believe there will be some grandfather talk around here.

Milledgeville was the capital of Georgia during the Civil War, and the old capitol building and Governor’s Mansion have both been renovated recently. Milledgeville was the home of the writer Flannery O’Connor (another of my major interests). Andalusia, the O’Connor family farm, has recently been opened to the public. Film legend Oliver Hardy also lived here, before leaving to go into show business. This was also home to the Honorable Carl Vinson, longtime congressman and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

Over the years I’ve been a U.S. Marine, a college student, a process control supervisor with a kaolin company, and a pastor of United Methodist and non-denominational churches. I am currently employed as a teacher at a local state prison. Since I’m the only teacher, I like to tell people I am the entire education department. I handle literacy, adult basic education, GED preparation, and English as a second language. At the moment, I even have a student who is studying Spanish with me. Meanwhile, I am trying to establish a business as an artist – I’ll share more about that later. I’ve registered an Internet domain name and I’m trying to learn how to build a website, and I’ve established eBay and Pay Pal accounts, but I’m not quite ready for market yet.

There’s a lot I want to talk about and share with you. Don’t be surprised if I throw out an insight or opinion about politics or religion. You don’t have to agree with me. Even though I’m a former preacher, I don’t like to be preachy. Hopefully this will be a welcome place where you’ll feel you can come to be refreshed. I’ll be here, so ya’ll come around any time you feel like it.