Dreams & Symbols

Surreal Symbolisms
Dreams & Symbols is the culmination of surreal artifacts and the disintegration of procrastination. It all began several years ago when a local used book shop had moved to a new location and left behind a crate of books the proprietors didn't want to bring to their new store. I rooted through the box and found a book called Dreams & Symbols. I thought it was a bunch of malarkey, but there were numerous beautiful full-colour images inside. I brought the book home so I could do collage or decoupage with it.

For about the same amount of time, I've been keeping a rough pine crate which had initially been used to store cannisters of tea. It was covered with unattractive stamped print, but I always meant to get around to doing something with it. For this project, this finally happened. The pine crate met the metaphysical coffee table book and together, they became transformed into this cabinet.

Surreal images were cut with scissors, or with a utility knife on a cutting board, then affixed in place with high-gloss Mod Podge. I also attached a pressed flower to the upper shelf (which is removeable) in this way, and sealed it with copious amounts of Mod Podge. In order to dry the thick amounts of sealant/adhesive, I jerry-rigged a hair drier on top of some clay pots on medium heat and let it dry while I worked on the rest of the cabinet.

The few parts of the box which have not been decoupaged have been coloured with ink and accented with bindis.

I consider the cabinet itself to be part and parcel with the collection. The decoupage work is a collection in itself, and accents are added with metallic ink.

The objects without the cabinet vary, depending on the placement of the cabinet. When the cabinet is on my window sill, the collection sprawls out on either side and on top, including such objects as an hourglass, candles, plume, stone goblet, brass bell, a hand-made spider pendant, rose beads, and incense. The plume and rose beads I fashioned myself. I believe the scent of roses and incense are just as evocative as the visuals, and the sand trickling through the hourglass places a temporal value on the exhibit.

When the cabinet is in a smaller area, the viewer's eye is directed more toward the interior of the cabinet. Skulls, heads, bone beads, Catholic saints, North American aboriginal spirit stone, and voodoo dolls lurk in the upper level. In the lower level, hand-painted china boxes (painted by me), a feather, a curious metal button, a rabbit skull, and two thimbles (modern and reproduction Viking). The collection is meant to be dreamlike and to provoke strange mental connections.