TITUS CAVE | NICK CAVE

Titus Cave (2024), mixed media on art board, 9 x 12 (Private Collection)

I liken my collage-making process to divination – not the spirit-summoning kind, but the water-dowsing kind, hovering and waiting for the sudden and irresistible movement of a forked twig toward a deep, invisible store of water.

When Titus Cave came together, I was watching a ball game on TV, scissors in hand, freeing some songbirds from reproduction postcards. Once they were liberated, I moved them over to my tabletop and started rifling through my paper files, looking for their companions, hovering them above disparate images. I had no end in mind.

Two images leapt up, though, both saved some 20 years before. One was a scrimshaw horn from National Geographic crafted by a sailor named Titus Cave in Chester, England in 1772. The other was a photograph of a chubby Black infant of a century ago, smiling in a washtub barely wider than he. Suddenly, even obviously, the curve of the horn became a boat or balloon for happy baby Titus to sail in, borne aloft by songbirds.

Laid out on newsprint, the arrangement cast a lovely shadow suggestive of flight. Thinking about how to preserve the shadow presented me with the solution to a series I’ve been working on using NASA photographs collected my broken spine copy of the book “Full Moon”, by Michael Light.

When I stepped away to check my phone, I learned that it was Nick Cave’s birthday I’ve been close with Nick since 2004, when he joined the cast of Came So Far for Beauty, the concerts of Leonard Cohen’s music that I co-produced with the late wonderful Hal Willner.

I took a screenshot of the unglued Titus Cave in progress and texted it to Nick in England, saying that I hadn’t known it was his birthday, yet look what came together tonight. He is an early riser and responded instantly, “That’s MINE!!!!!!!” And now Titus enjoys pride of place in his London home.