Storm of the i: An Artobiography

Here's what Sara Davidson, New York Times best-selling author of Loose Change and Leap! had to say about Storm of the i: This book is a fabulous hybrid, a memoir that s alive with foldouts, paintings, drawings and a surprising lift-up flap. Beneath the playfulness, however, lies the story of an artist trying to understand her father s lifelong anger towards her. At the pinnacle of her career, an exhibition of her work in Paris, Tina Collen finds herself inexplicably weeping. It takes courage to probe a father s lifelong rejection, but Collen has wonderful tools: her humor, memories and the trail of art she created. I discovered Collen through her Fleurotica collages (shown and discussed in the book). At first glance, I thought I was looking at lush paintings of wildflowers, but on closer examination, I was in the world of the Kama Sutra. Based on the idea that flowers are simply sex organs, Collen created her wildflowers from risqué magazine scraps. She took something forbidden and transformed it into something witty, beautiful and acceptable. In Storm of the i, she takes a heartbreaking story and transforms it into something witty, beautiful and unforgettable.