Bloor! The Work-Art of Addison Godel

Who says you can't have fun at work? A few markers, a few magazines, and a little ingenuity can lead to endless amounts of collage-making and sophomoric defacement. Fun for the whole family! This page is sort of the "greatest hits" of junk I've produced at work, primarily at Chapter 11 Books in Atlanta and the University of Georgia Library's Copy Services in Athens. I hope these pieces will be appreciated for what they are, and perhaps encourage others to share their own Work-Art elsewhere on the web. I really think there's a certain charm to this stuff.

Left: A magazine photo of Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong which bore a surprising resemblence to Chapter 11's marketing guy. Then-assistant-manager Lindsay Bianchi scrawled "BLOOR" on the picture for reasons known mainly to him. For several days thereafter, it was posted behind the counter for employees to deface, and collectively we did quite a number on the guy.

Below: Bloor #2, a sequel to the first Bloor featuring boring rap-metal band Papa Roach.

Bloor #3, featuring Billy Bob Thornton, was unfortunately lost. An unknown Chapter 11 employee tore it down and threw it away for really no justifiable reason. It was the weakest of the Bloors anyway, and by this time we'd run out of free magazines that we could tear up, so I took a break from this series for a while. Also, Lindsay got fired/quit and so a major collaborator was lost.

Above left: All American Killin' was created at the University of Georgia Library, where I work at the copy services desk during the school year. It features elements from two record albums that I'd purchased before coming to work (Elvis Costello's This Year's Model and Bikini Kill's Reject All American), as well as several magazine and newspaper clippings. In my mind, All American Killin' is a poster for a slasher movie.

Above right: Untitled Death Stare was created on the same day as All American Killin', like that piece, it features Elvis Costello's eyes. It also has Nicole Kidman's head and Ben Kingsley's head. I think it has a great wintry evil to it.

Right: Promotional poster for What's In That Bag?, a sitcom-concept I developed while cutting up magazines at Copy Services. The star-studded cast crosses a variety of genres and is guaranteed to bring home the laughs with over-the-top melodrama, gender-bending, and just a little bit of hip-hop flavor. The only components I can positively identify are the rapper Ludacris (mustached face on top of female Navy body), Chairman Kaga from Iron Chef (his head is on the other Navy body; his body is the one holding an apple) and Colleen Haskell of Survivor (head is on the boxer body in the foreground, body is wearing a floral top to the immediate right). The rest are just random misplaced heads and bodies from various magazine ads - mostly Entertainment Weekly, as that's what coworker Megan Tyrell was inviting me to cut up.

I'd like to say, incidentally, that there is very little that can match the glee produced by cutting up magazines and finding funny bodies to put funny heads on.

So, what's in that bag? Entertainment!

The Galactic Hyper-Team (left): Taken entirely from free materials at Chapter 11 - one free magazine and several copies of a free Star Wars: Attack of the Clones poster. Again thinking in terms of a possible TV series, I identify the chartacters by their archetypes. From left to right: the muscle guy, the brains of the team, the attitude-laden leader, the comic relief, and the mysterious one.

It gets really slow on Sundays at Chapter 11. I just wish I'd been able to fit the whole thing on the scanner....

Black And White Face (left): Created by making mostly random folds and cuts in a page from a "Page-a-Day" calendar, taping the results together in a pleasing shape, and using the result (along with a handy Sharpie) as a stencil on an entirely new sheet of paper. I think it turned out very well, and would make a great album cover.

And yes, I do think there's a face in there. At least, that's what I saw in it while I was assembling the paper scraps together. My friend Matt Beermann refers to the piece as a "pixellated Guernica," which I am inclined to treat as a compliment.

Mrs. Booksley and her daughter, Mrs. Booksley, Jr. (both not pictured due to their untimely destruction) were taken from small shelf displays of Dr. Christine Northrup and some teenage pap book. Artfully placed on some really interestingly colored paper arrangements, the Booksleys provided answers to bookstore questions. "Got a book question? Just ask Mrs. Booksley! She's got the only answer you'll ever need." "You're ugly!" was what Mrs. Booksley proclaimed, and she was thrown away not long after I returned to school for a semester. On my return, I was disturbed by the destruction of Mrs. Booksley and so I produced her daughter, who had a similar setup; instead of saying "You're ugly!" she instead demanded "Who killed my mother?!" She was also dispensed with on my return to school.