Book Review: Storm of the i: An Artobiography by Tina Collen

Over the past ten years the market has been flooded with an outpouring of memoirs from people who think the rest of us want to hear their tales of woe. While some have been written from a genuine desire to assist others struggling to come to grips with their own recovery, far too many have been self-serving attention seeking grabs for a flicker of celebrity.

Unfortunately the numbers in the latter category have come to so outweigh the former many of us cringe upon hearing yet another “brave story of one (insert gender here)’s struggle to overcome his/her past” has been unleashed upon the public. All of which means those few voices which might have something of value to say, aren’t receiving a fair hearing.

Personally, I’m one of those whose instinctive reaction upon receiving a press release containing anything close to the “brave story” phrase is to hit delete and move on. As a survivor and a writer I find most of them either tedious or downright offensive. Having gone through years of therapy and dealt with my own shit, frankly, I’ve little interest in wading through other people’s manure, especially when they have nothing new to say about the subject at hand. That’s especially true about those who are looking for their Oprah moment by telling the world about how miserable they were as a child. What are you trying to accomplish by spilling your guts to the world without putting it into any sort of context beyond self-pity and the confessional? No matter what anybody might say to the contrary there is nothing “inspirational” in reading somebody’s tale of woe. What would be inspirational would be for you to have the courage to go to a therapist once a week and deal with your problems, but that makes for pretty boring reading and won’t garner you any headlines.

So to say I was surprised to find myself intrigued enough to not only read the entire press release, but to request a review copy of Storm Of The i: An Artobiography by Tina Collen, published by her own Art Review Press, is a bit of an understatement. However, there was something about the attitude expressed in the release, and the outline of the concept for the book, that intrigued me. That the kiss of death “brave” catch phrase was nowhere to be seen and the author, a visual artist and graphic designer, was unabashedly proud of her other work, implying she was anything but the victim type, helped convince me this might be a story worth reading. However the real clincher was the fact you could tell that Ms. Collen, in spite of whatever her story was, had never lost her sense of the absurd and was still able to laugh at the world in spite of what it may have done to her.

As a graphic and visual artist Ms. Collen has elected to tell her story utilizing the skills she is most comfortable with as well as the written word. (Hence the sub-title “An Artobiography”) Having grown tired of the standard format of both biographies and autobiographies, with their written equivalent of the talking heads in a documentary movie telling a person’s story and passionless listings of events in neat chronological order, even somebody daring to consider an alternative was exciting. It was the obvious question of how she would do this which first sprang to mind. However, the answer wasn’t anything as neat and tidy as I thought. Instead of the book being filled with images either reflecting her emotional state during the process of recovery or recently created works that looked back on her life telling the story in hindsight, she has done something far more revealing.

Any creative person, but especially one working in the visual arts, tells their own story through their work whether they are aware of it or not. No matter what the subject matter part of who they are and how they are feeling at the time they worked on a project can’t help but being communicated in the finished result. While Ms. Collen had always known her relationship with her father was a source of grief in her life — it felt like everything she did, from dating to having children, angered him and that he was constantly belittling her — it was in her work that the true impact of their relationship was manifested. Looking at various pieces she had created throughout her life she began to notice recurring themes of emptiness. The void inside of her created by her father’s apparent lack of love that she had repressed and carefully hidden from herself and the world had been on display for all to see if they, and she, had only known what to look for.

Even more frightening, in some ways, was coming to the understanding that her ability to lose herself in her work, to become immersed in whatever she was working on, was in fact a means of running away from dealing with the issue. While all artists lose themselves in their work to the extent they can block out the world around them if their focus is sufficient, some of the examples of Ms. Collen’s pieces included in the book border on obsessive in their need for attention to detail. She created a truly brilliant and witty series of works where she painstakingly created very realistic pictures of flowers by using body parts cut from pornographic magazines as the material. (For more on these works check out the Fleurotica section of her web site)

To the world she exuded confidence and bravado, always able to make those around her laugh and delight in her creativity and intellect. But she was crippled by back and neck pain and swamped by tidal waves of guilt, remorse and grief that began to manifest in debilitating as periods of depression so deep she wouldn’t want to leave her bed. But this is not solely a tale of woe; it’s also a celebration of a life filled with creativity and a zest for experiences. Unlike other tell-all confessions filled with self-abasement, recrimination and negativity, Collen doesn’t leave you feeling like you’re on a guided trip of the nine circles of her personal hell. In creating this map of her journey she details the whole process, not just the negatives. She even owns up to having taken pleasure out of her life, not something you’d expect to find in this type of book.

One thing — and I was ever so grateful for this — she doesn’t claim to have the answers. She’s very careful never to cross the line between telling her story and telling people what to do with their situations. While she does talk about the various therapies she has attempted in her search for relief, she refrains from becoming an advocate for any particular one. Even her description of attending an intensive seminar/lecture series whose methods very obviously don’t work for her, makes sure to point out how it works for a number of the participants. What she does make clear is that no matter what therapy you use, recovery from any type of early life trauma is ultimately dependant on whether or not an individual is willing to be completely honest with themselves and do their own work. A therapist is only a guide, they can’t change your life for you, only you can do that. Not only does Collen make that clear, she also makes it obvious that each of us are different and that her story isn’t to be taken as any sort of guideline for recovery.

So what was her purpose in writing this book if it wasn’t for that reason? She’s honest enough to even tackle that question. At one point she wonders out loud if the process of writing this book, with all its little intricacies and design features, isn’t just another means of escape. However, she doesn’t try to justify its writing by saying things like “I hope my story will inspire others” or some such crap. She’s doing it because she needs to; it’s part of her process. She’s a creative and intelligent person who thrives when making pieces of art. This book is simply one more of her creations; this time it just happens to be a very realistic, multi media, self-portrait. While other artists might have painted out the wart on their chin, she’s more inclined to follow in the footsteps of people like Van Gogh who had no fear of showing the world their true state when putting their own image onto canvas.

Some of the reviews for this book I’ve read warn that this style of memoir might become a trend, with people publishing scrap books of their lives in an attempt to tell their stories. All I can say is I sincerely hope not. In the hands of an artist gifted with the honesty, humour and integrity of Tina Collen, this book works. Some might find its lack of traditional book structure — one page might be pictures of events in the past with little written explanations of the events depicted while the next deals with something completely unrelated — confusing because it-s not divided up into neat chapters nor told in what appears to be a chronological order. Yet, if you think of it as a really large canvass made up of the multitude of experiences that exist inside her brain right now — after all, we are inherently cubist as everything we have ever done lives on somewhere inside of us making us all multifaceted whether we’re aware of it or not — you’ll realize you’ve actually been given more of a complete picture os a person’s life than either an autobiography or biography would normally supply. Like a collage it’s all laid out in front of us to look at and absorb as individual images and ideas catch our attention.

Tina Collen has taken the staid and boring world of biography/autobiography and blown it wide open. While you may never have heard of her and her work before, with Storm of the i she has created something both remarkable, for its bold and fresh approach, and worth taking note of as a piece of art. In a digital age with the Internet at her disposal, she has chosen to utilize two of humanity’s oldest means of expression and combine them in ways that both challenge and engage the reader. Asking what purpose does it serve is no more relevant than asking what purpose any painting, novel, song, dance, opera or sculptor serves. Remember all art has its roots in the autobiographical; this work is just a little bit more obvious about it than others.