I thought the absence of him from my life meant the inspiration behind my artwork would be gone. Each piece came from that space created when he didn't have time for me. I can't demonize him for that, though. He was a fellow human being who loved his job and had no control over how much it required of him. As much as I understood the way the world moved around him, I hated the way that it deprived me of him, too. In retrospect, I probably should have thanked him for that growth. It's too late now, which is fine because, in some way, I resent that growth, too. Following the exodus, I found myself filling the space once again as though it was all I knew how to do. It happened after I went to the thrift store in search of winter clothes. I ended up buying an elongated frame and an ugly faux watercolor painting because its color scheme matched that of a faux watercolor seahorse I had bought from a different thrift store.

I wanted to create again, maybe because I wanted him out of my head, and working on a collage has always given me the ability to focus on something besides the fact that he wasn't around. When I looked at the materials, I could see the seahorse escaping the depths of the ocean, escaping from its past, a bad experience, a bad memory---a relationship with the ocean that almost ended its short narrative. I placed them in a pile and then, on one not so particularly special day, I started trying to piece things together.

I painted the frame first. I gave it two tones to maintain the depth in its design. I chose to use French Linen and Sheepskin paint. The top layer, the Sheepskin paint, purposely matched the base of the canvas so that I could alter the frame in a manner that made it look as though the artwork was defying the boundaries ascribed to it. I like to do that because it's outside the norm, because it bucks the limitations of society's expectations, which have been imposed on me my whole life. I didn't put a lot of thought into altering the frame until my last two projects. Before that, I merely painted the frames and slapped a little gold leaf on them. Now, post-breakup and post-my last gig, which weren’t exactly two different experiences, I find myself a little irritated at the idea that something beautiful must only exist within the limitations ascribed to it. Why must we dictate the outcome of X with our expectations of it?

After that, I moved forward with no plan, just like I have my whole life. My first step was to use the remnants of a crappy canvas art I'd bought for $12 at the Fells Point Good Will earlier this year for no better reason than it was there. I had used most of the canvas for another collage. It was supposed to be an anniversary gift since my ex and I had gotten to know each other in a community garden, but I ended up making him something less flowery and keeping the original collage. In retrospect, that was probably for the best because the original collage is one of my favorite pieces to date. Looking back, I find myself a little distressed that he gets to keep part of me and I get to keep no part of him. I think that's the last time I do that for anyone. That's a lot of work and creativity just to watch something beautiful ride off into the abyss with someone I used to know.

Since I didn't have a direction to go in, I looked through my archives and found a photo of Baltimore City Hall from 2017. It wasn't a great photo, but it was salvageable. I figured I could cut out the sky and work with it. So, I ordered a 17-inch print to put at the bottom of the collage. By the time it arrived in the mail, I knew what I would do with it. It would serve as the base of a surreal coral reef, one that was once home to a seahorse that one day escaped its surroundings. To make that concept work, though, I'd have to create a lot of seaweed from scratch.

I spent weeks fudging around with seaweed that I made from scratch. I molded it around the seahorse. I layered it. There's no way I'd ever do anything like that again. So, please enjoy this first coral reef I've made and the last coral reef I'll ever make. Afterwards, I shifted my focus to the fish. I wanted the fish in my surreal barrier reef to represent the underlying dangers of city life, but I didn't want to do it in a way that would traumatize anyone. So, I bought an unused strip of crime scene tape off of Etsy and chopped it up for the colors that were in it. The average person probably wouldn't look at the fish and see their origin. Undertone is important, though. Yes, Baltimore is a beautiful city, but it does have its share of dangers, and just because you're not trying to survive them doesn't mean hundreds of thousands of other people aren't trying to survive them. That's when I realized that the collage was about surviving the city, and about surviving a bad breakup, too. Maybe when someone leaves Baltimore for good, it's a breakup-esque experience. Sometimes, the good memories overshadow the bad ones. Sometimes, the bad memories show up in your dreams.

The stencil I used for the fish forced them to all relatively be in the same size range. I bought it at the dollar store on Belair Road. Art supplies are expensive, particularly if you have them shipped to you, so I tried to make the best of what was immediately available to me. Was it the wrong thing to do? I don't know. Most people tend to fret about whether they've taken a right or wrong step toward the future pretty much every day of their lives. I don't believe there are wrong steps, though. Any step forward is progress because it can lead to somewhere you didn't expect to go. In the end, it's your expectations that will ruin you, not the steps you took.

Initially, I was going to build the collage around this large seahorse, but the more I looked at it, the more I felt like the seahorse was too big to fit the narrative. To change its size, I took a picture of it and had it printed at a local Walgreens. Then, to accommodate the new size, I cut up the remnants of the canvas to reduce its flowery look. Once that was done, I glued down the seahorse before I could change my mind—because there's nothing worse than indecision. Indecisive people get other people killed. That's a life fact. After that, I began cutting up GPS photos of Antarctica to create an undertow. Then, I harvested flowers from the garden books I bought at the thrift store and had them float up through the seaweed. After all, the scary thing about an undertow is that, in a beautiful environment, you forget it is there and that it poses a threat. The seahorse was happy in the coral reef. It was comfortable. It forgot about the dangers. It forgot that it could die.

Eventually, I found myself leaning into the bad habit of wanting everything to make sense while creating a nonsensical environment. I sought out only the orange flowers at first. At one point, I began fretting about how the flowers didn't match. They were different types and sizes. Then, I thought: Salvador Dali did not sit around wondering if his melted clock was too big to hang off of a tiny branch on a tree that wouldn't be found in the desert. I told myself to "just do what you're going to do." That's when I decided to let color drive my narrative. I started using strips of paper from discarded books and magazines to make water ripples of different colors. It was tedious but necessary to show underwater movement. Once I was mostly finished with that portion of the collage, I returned my attention to the frame. I'd toyed with the idea of expanding the coral reef onto the frame. I didn't exactly know how to do that, though, you know, outside of painting part of the frame blue, which I was hesitant to do. It's difficult for someone like me, who hates painting, to do a good job at painting anything. So, I stole some inspiration from an Etsy store that specializes in reclaimed furniture. The Etsy store owner uses furniture transfers to conceal the mess made when merging two paint colors. I figured I could do that, too.

Again, I had no plan. I cannot express with words how important it is not to have a plan. Your plans will hold you back. They will limit the potential outcome in all aspects of your life. People who have set plans generally have control issues, too. In the end, all that planning says more about them and you than the project that is being working on. Worse, sometimes that project is your life.

After I adjusted the paint on the frame, I opted to use the furniture transfers I had in the house to further alter it. Furniture transfers aren't cheap, and I didn't have an extra $30 to spend on what I thought I wanted. There was a point when I felt like that was a mistake, but I ended up making peace with my efforts after I added gold leaf around the furniture transfers. I did that to soften the contrast between the transfer and the paint and to further illustrate how the darkness can be alluring. Life isn't black and white, good or bad. There are no pure heroes or villains. Everyone and every situation has a little of both. Somewhere out there, my ex believes that I'm a villain, in part because he jumped to the wrong conclusion. He leaped after it like a football player determined to catch the game ball and take it to the end zone at the bottom of the fourth quarter, and then he ran with it as though the rest of his athletic career depended on that one performance. In my eyes, that makes him the villain. None of that is purely villainous, though. We both made mistakes. I've struggled to acknowledge how big of a mistake I made by giving him room to come to the wrong conclusion, and he may never acknowledge that he made a mistake at all. Some people just don't want to believe they've done something terrible to someone else, and that's life for you. It's like a coral reef. Everything is beautiful and wonderful until the beautiful and wonderful stuff is trying to kill you from the inside out. Sometimes, a person is really happy with their coral reef environment, and it's not until they've been pulled out of it that they realize it was unhealthy for them. In some cases, for some people, the unhealthy darkness feels like home, and leaving it is practically a small death in its own right.

Toward the end of this project, a friend from the old days of $20K salaries came to town to visit me. She wanted to help with the collage, too. So, she flagged a few GPS photos in a map book for me to look at. I found the photo of the Ganges River to have the right coloring for the coral reef portion of the collage. For some reason, I decided to try something new and integrate it into the design on the frame. I was surprised by how well it worked out, and I will never look at a frame the same way again.

Lastly, I worked on the exodus of the seahorse, which I made appear light and easy. The exit doesn't offer the intense beauty, depth, danger, or heaviness of the darkness. In this situation—if you've ever been in this situation—happiness isn't dictated by one's choices but rather by one's state of mind. It's not that the seahorse was unhappy with its environment, it's that the seahorse didn't see the danger associated with its surroundings. The unknown future, life after leaving the coral reef, may appear bland and uninviting, but at least the seahorse will have the opportunity to move toward it, which is a lot more than it would have if it wasn't able to move forward at all.

In the end, this collage is a little bit about a seahorse I found at a thrift store, but it's a lot about surviving a relationship. Mine ended with two different narratives. He walked out thinking I was the bad guy; I left believing he was the bad guy. We didn't have the same experience at all, but we still both survived something. I'm calling it "Escape from Shangri-La," which is a hat tip to a Stevie Nicks song called Planets of the Universe on her Trouble in Shangri-La album. The song has a lot of deep and dark lyrics about surviving love.

I think what I've learned here is that I want to take collage art somewhere that it hasn't gone before: beyond the canvas and into the frame. I haven't come across anything similar online. Most artists simply accept the boundaries of a frame, right down to its color.

My friend, don't do this to your life.