Janine Nichols 11/14/25 Janine Nichols 11/14/25

PENNY COLOSSUS

It’s official. The penny is no more. As of Wednesday, November 12, 2025 the US Mint has ceased production of the copper penny, the cost of which exceeds its value by more than two additional pennies, said to be too wasteful, despite the fact that it costs fourteen cents to make a nickel, 6 cents to make a dime and fifteen to make a quarter. The first penny was minted in 1793 and featured a frightened-looking Liberty with tousled hair people found objectionable. In 1793, a penny would buy you a biscuit, a candle or a piece of candy. Penny candy was still a thing for post-WWII kids like me.

The National Association of Convenience Stores has long advocated for the abolition of the penny, but its sudden demise this week unaccompanied by instructions for how to carry on, came as a shock to them and all retailers. “This is not the way we wanted it to go,” said its representative. Round up? Round down? Hoard? Redeem for prizes? Some banks, paradoxicially, now are rationing pennies. Make it make sense!

I keep a jar of Wheaties for uses to be determined. I have two old typewriters with the cent sign offered in the lowercase, just below the @, a sign that rose to an unimaginable dominance. I don’t remember knowing what it was for as a kid. I still like that the cent sign always followed the number, so that 5 cents was written as pronouced, as opposed to $1.

The faces of coins tell stories about a people, a civilization. The copper penny kept President Lincoln present, he who freed the slaves. The current regime probably doesn’t want that reminder, but it’s demise certainly can’t be entirely attributed to wasteful spending. What’s now proposed is a silver dollar with Dear Leader’s face both obverse and reverse, reading both E PLURIBUS UNUM and FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT. Not incidentally, its production would violate federal law, which prohibits depictions of living persons on the nation’s currency for precisely the reason he wants it.

When I made this collage, simple as it appears, it took a while to properly position the penny. I chose to make the Latin phrase fully visible as an antidote to the mayhem in the foreground, the calm that follows the storm. Francisco Goya painted this fearful scene in Spain during the Peninsular War, whatever that was, between 1808 and 1812. And there are other versions. Sometimes the Giant seems forlorn, his back to the world beneath a crescent moon, but he’s aggressive in this version, and chaos reigns below, people and horses and cattle scattering in terror, blood on the ground.

I could never have imagined that one day this juxtaposition of giant and penny might be understood as prescient or profound.

The Windows shortcut for the cent sign is Alt + 0162.

Prints available. Write me! Link in the Contact page.

Janine Nichols 1/27/25 Janine Nichols 1/27/25

THE THIRD THING

*Braintree* (2012) layered tape transfers on paper, 14" x 17"

Rare is the artist who can describe in a few words the power of collage. One I’ve found is Todd Bartel, who came onto my radar, and I onto his, in 2012 when he included my piece, Braintree, in the centennial he curated at the Thompson Gallery in Weston, MA. Braintree, like so much of my paper collage, is a straightforward juxtaposition, in that case an ink drawing of a bare tree by Leonardo da Vinci with an overlay of leaves made from a sectional drawing in an old anatomy book that is, truth be told, a section of the stomach (no one notices). Braintree is a town in Massachusetts, and the title might have brought the piece to his attention. I can’t help it if I’m lucky.

I was looking at Todd’s work online recently, and reading/watching his interviews. As a champion of juxtaposition, I was beyond grateful to find – somewhere -- his “practical and cherished” definition of collage:

“A collage is established by putting together two or more collected things—actual or intellectual. Anything coupled is a collage…. In a phrase, “one plus one equals three.” One thing plus another thing equals a third thing—a phenomenological, third thing. The third thing is the true nature of collage. My practical and cherished definition of collage is “the third thing.”

Elsewhere, he added that “collage is odd math” wherein “1 + 1 = 3.” Eureka. I’d been searching for a category title describing a selection of my work that meets his elemental description. I am very grateful to him for the solution. “Juxtaposition” has no artistic synonym.

Of course, Todd’s work is captivatingly complex (no one makes more poetic use of document repair tape than he), lately, vast landviews, his word, exquisitely imagined and crafted, often double-sided, slipped between glass in hinged frames. No one makes more poetic use of document repair tape than he. Follow him down.

Janine Nichols 1/25/25 Janine Nichols 1/25/25

TITUS CAVE | NICK CAVE

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.