Exquisite Corpse 2 - The Seething Medusa
© Natalie Schorr 2023
I actually think this is a pretty amusing piece. What woman has not felt this way at some time in her life? Medusas are great images to work with, and who doesn’t love a head full of snakes.
I have it in mind to make some pieces to enter in this show, and they all need to be 12”x121”, so I trotted down to Jerry’s and bought some more cradled wood panels and got to work.
I thought I would break down the components of this piece. Down the left hand side is a very old vintage wallpaper in dark green with a pseudo-woven pattern. I can only imagine how dark a room would be covered in that.
The head is a linocut of Mona Lisa, which is also the basis of the head on Exquisite Corpse 1, and will likely be a recurring feature of this series. The snakes are also linocuts that were further embellished with colored pencil.
The sky on the right behind the city is actually the surface of Mars which I toned down quite a bit with marker and pen. It was from a book on, of all things, Mars.
The city was an art piece I found in a book about the Machine Age in America which has many cool pictures and photos.
The delightful cowboy boots are from a book on shoes. Don’t ask me which one, I have destroyed many shoe books in the past few years.
The torso is from a 1970s era Playboy. Playboys are cheap and easy to find and they have a ton of great pictures and mod typography from the time. Don’t look at them under black lights. though.
The eyes and mouth are from some fairly modern ad, and I kind of love the attitude they convey. This piece took a really long time to find and assemble all the parts, but I’m pleased with the result.