douglas brent smith

uncle grant -- can't can't chant pay now pay - for what we say uncle chuck - can't trust your luck tell us true - what do you do? what's the price? the thought is nice lift the lid? that's what we did sign right here - and here, and here grant three wishes - charity cheer freestyle lifestyle paid with tax scoop the art until it cracks uncle grant grant us one wish serve it up nonprofit dish we will write your favorite book paint your piece a proper look film the scene that lights you up fill the ever empty cup uncle grant let's find the spin show us how to cash it in. -- douglas brent smith  

 You Are Here -- collage by douglas brent smith

 Transactions Along The Path - collage by douglas brent smith

  This Won't Hurt A Bit -- collage by douglas brent smith

  The Symbol Is Not The Map of the Territory -- collage by douglas brent smith

 The 100% Game Process -- collage by douglas brent smith

  Science Had An Answer -- collage by douglas brent smith

Reactions to the Face On Mars -- collage by douglas brent smith.      It seemed like a revelation, a sign. Pictures taken of the surface of mars seemed to show a face. Could this mean that there was an intelligent civilization there once upon a time? Many years later, when our cameras produced much higher resolution images we saw that it wasn't really a face at all. It's just something that people do -- we see faces everywhere. We anthropomorphize wildly.  Well, the illusion was fun while it lasted. And it lasted long enough to be on my mind when I made this collage in 1993.

  Random 1992 Sketches -- douglas brent smith

  Please Let Me Know When You Are Free -- collage by douglas brent smith

  Kids Outgrow Things -- collage by douglas brent smith

  Big Boy With A View -- collage by douglas brent smith and christopher morgan smith, 1992

  Constructing a Better Setting -- collage by douglas brent smith, 30 December 1992

 On The Job Training - collage by douglas brent smith

  Not Those Hats - collage by douglas brent smith

  Love One Another -- collage by douglas brent smith, 17 March 1993

  More Than One Set Of Books -- collage by douglas brent smith

  Improving The Quality of Life -- collage by douglas brent smith      Can you spot the details added in 2024? Improving The Quality of Life -- collage by douglas brent smith (original 1992 version).

  Glued Lightly, Held Tightly, Danced Nightly -- collage by douglas brent smith    

  Globe Sequence - collage by douglas brent smith     

Forgiveness may not fix the forgiven but it's a good start, -- doug smith  

  Getting Away From (most of) It All -- collage by douglas brent smith.     

Feast or Fedora? collage by douglas brent smith.                         NOTES:           Not sure that this is finished. Maybe it needs color. Maybe some more drawing. For now, it is a collage with much more text than usual. It's of a time so long ago for me now that I think I'll just let it be. It's a page from a journal with a bit of beat sensibility baked in. Or burnt.  Here, at least. You never can tell when that will change...

  Family Reunion -- collage by douglas brent smith

  Distances, Lines, Dreams - collage by douglas brent smith

  Control Surge -- collage by douglas brent smith

  Contemplating the Case for Control -- collage by douglas brent smith NOTES: I made so many of these black & white, copy-machine preserved collages which developed a moment here, a moment there, adding or drawing snatches of things that grabbed my attention while I was doing other things. When Collageman's mind wanders, where else would you expect it to go? I did turn many of these (and entire three-ring binder full) into color collages using markers. When did I ever find the time for that? The coloring happened at home, listening to music, watching TV...in idle hours in the days before the internet stole our brains. Different times, indeed.

  Challenging Gravity on Four Different Planes -- collage by douglas brent smith, 26 December 1992. It wasn't easy being a scientists and working with bears was no picnic. Well, it could be a picnic for the bears because they insisted on being paid in food. Getting them to defy gravity kept the scientist busy. It got easier when they discovered a secret plane in plain sight. It made hovering a darn site easier.

Browsing Past The Built In Bias -- collage by douglas brent smith Paper and glue using pictures from magazines.  I always enjoyed seeing an illustration in a text book that had a caption that declared "Not to scale." Of course it's not to scale, it's in a book. Or it's in a magazine. This illustration of course IS to scale, if you're using a scale from the Irregular Catalogue.  Doesn't it look hot in those hazmat suits? 

  A Workplace On The Edge of Town -- collage by douglas brent smith

  A Visit to An Interrupted Dream -- collage by douglas brent smith

  The Secret Drama Sings to Silent Applause -- collage by douglas brent smith, 30 December 1992. From Journal #28, An Expandable Family . This journal suffered so much water damage and mildew from the Elm Street fire that it may eventually need to be be thrown away. I've already torn several unreadable pages out, but the whole thing is a mess. I'm doing what I can to save the art work.

A secret changes as soon as it's discovered.  -- doug smith

  Browsing Past The Built-in Bias In The Public Library - collage by douglas brent smith

  Body Language - collage by douglas brent smith

  Big Number 2 - collage by douglas brent smith, 1992

  Body Language - collage by douglas brent smith

 "Big Fat TV" collage by douglas brent smith. when you are  in a hurry and still want to get  there in good spirit be sure to dance & smell the flowers & pack lightly because you've got so much more to pick up put away light up serenade grow and know you're individual flow. NOTES: This is one of a series of collages I made using a good old fashioned copy machine, combined with some cut-out doodles and random pictures -- these apparently featuring transportation (and dance!) I added the poem after posting the collage. Now they belong together! ~ dbSm ~

It might feel like our youth abandons us, but it's always available within us. Ask questions. Try new things. Meet new people and make new friends. That field of work is also a field of play. Stay young. -- doug smith

  A Walk In The Country - a collage by douglas brent smith, 1992. Walks in the country often produce surprises. You never know what you'll find.

  A New Perspective - collage by douglas brent smith, 11 November 1992 Notes: How do you feel about x-ray vision? I remember vividly (in 3D?) seeing for the first time the movie "X - The Man With X-Ray Eyes" starring Ray Milland. I enjoy that movie so much. Poor Ray, suffers so much for his gift, and craves much more than he can ever see. It's a classic story of the perils of experimenting on yourself. But, isn't that all any of us are doing? Experimenting with ourselves? We don't know how this turns out for certain. I have faith in certain destinies, but seriously who really knows? Improving one's vision along the way seems like a great advantage. I've been blessed with correctable eyes, and they have needed lots of correcting over the years. I do not take vision for granted and I do thank God for my vision every day. And, while I do need to use three kinds of eye drops every day, none of them give me X-Ray vision, and that's a good thing. Look at poo

The Tempest and the Toolmaker - collage by douglas brent smith - 

Secrets lead to disappointment. -- doug smith

What we think we own is always more expensive than we think. -- doug smith 

We are bound to each other in ways that cannot be untied. -- doug smith

  Exactly, More or Less - collage by douglas brent smith, 30 November 1991 she looked at me as if i knew what i was doing but she knew that i didn't and was not having  any of it making it all sideways slipped and slipping so i did my best to get her attention only achieving disapproval.

  Lamp, sketch by douglas brent smith, mixed media, 1992 This is a drawing of an actual lamp. I don't remember where the lamp lived -- maybe in our house on 39th Place -- that seems logical. It appears in journal #27 Repercussions .

  Downstream Corporation - collage by douglas brent smith, 30 August 1991. The board of directors is not in the mood for slacking. The stream must keep flowing and the product must roll. There is money to be made, but wait! That pause for fun has already begun. For most of my life, collages all came together in one day. They could take hours, but I would seldom stop working on one until it was done. Usually the radio would be playing endlessly in the background -- WMMR when I lived in NJ or PA, WXRT when I lived in Chicago. For this collage, it was WXRT all the way. - dbS - 

  You Can Be... - sketch by douglas brent smith Where do you stand? What do you demand?  Who do you declare yourself to be? 

  You Can Be Positive - collage by douglas brent smith.

Follow your intuition when you want more of what you've already got. Get more creative when you want something else. -- doug smith

  Worldview Built In a Day - collage by douglas brent smith, 3 January 1988

  Truth and Bull - sketch by douglas brent smith, 1989. Have you ever felt completely upside-down?  "How do I know that you're telling the truth." "Because I always tell the truth." "Well, I know that's not true." "How do you know?" "Because it can't be true. How do I know that anything you say is true if I can't trust what you just said." "Because I am 100% truthful." "That's bull." "Or is it?" Feeling upside down, the conversation ended. Were they any closer to the truth? Likely, not. - dbS -  Here's another version of the image with more saturation, allowing you to see some of what is on the back of the page, and adding more color:

  One Spirit One Energy One World - collage by douglas brent smith, 16 November 1991