Lately I have been playing with collage. I have several big ideas floating around in my head but when it comes down to executing them somehow the ideas get a little lost. One of the things that draws me to collage is using found items combined with mixing a variety of media, and the complete freedom to abandon being faithful to a certain world paint sets up. I can paint a figure, or just cut one out of a magazine, and then scribble over it, paint it out, cover it with tissue paper, paint or paste words in, and cover that with something else. Anything goes, and I find myself not holding back. The trouble I have is when I want to plan my collages. I am much stronger just going on intuition generally-- but I want to be able to plan ahead and take responsibility for the finished product. But this week-- after feeling like I was going nowhere really-- I decided to just do collage for collage sake. And above is some of the results. I don't know that it's brilliant, but it's interesting, and nothing like I planned. Maybe that's better anyway. I like the ambiguity of it, and how it's mysterious. Like most of my stuff right after it's done, i don't really know what to make of it yet and that's probably why I'm posting it. In case anybody is curious (because it's not real clear in my shoddy digital camera photo) it's made with bits of plastic bag and tissue paper. Plastic bags are my new favorite item ever since I saw a show of huge quilt-like collages of plastic bags. I don't remember the artist off hand but I'll look it up sometime in my gallery journal and note it here. But since then I've been saving every interesting plastic bag possible for something like this. (It has been a struggle to do so since my roommate is a compulsive cleaner and many of the things I put aside for my art like glass bottles, wine bottles, plastic bags, etc. get thrown out if I don't pack rat them away.)
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Collage-podge
Lately I have been playing with collage. I have several big ideas floating around in my head but when it comes down to executing them somehow the ideas get a little lost. One of the things that draws me to collage is using found items combined with mixing a variety of media, and the complete freedom to abandon being faithful to a certain world paint sets up. I can paint a figure, or just cut one out of a magazine, and then scribble over it, paint it out, cover it with tissue paper, paint or paste words in, and cover that with something else. Anything goes, and I find myself not holding back. The trouble I have is when I want to plan my collages. I am much stronger just going on intuition generally-- but I want to be able to plan ahead and take responsibility for the finished product. But this week-- after feeling like I was going nowhere really-- I decided to just do collage for collage sake. And above is some of the results. I don't know that it's brilliant, but it's interesting, and nothing like I planned. Maybe that's better anyway. I like the ambiguity of it, and how it's mysterious. Like most of my stuff right after it's done, i don't really know what to make of it yet and that's probably why I'm posting it. In case anybody is curious (because it's not real clear in my shoddy digital camera photo) it's made with bits of plastic bag and tissue paper. Plastic bags are my new favorite item ever since I saw a show of huge quilt-like collages of plastic bags. I don't remember the artist off hand but I'll look it up sometime in my gallery journal and note it here. But since then I've been saving every interesting plastic bag possible for something like this. (It has been a struggle to do so since my roommate is a compulsive cleaner and many of the things I put aside for my art like glass bottles, wine bottles, plastic bags, etc. get thrown out if I don't pack rat them away.)
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