The Various Messages of Scraps

I'm almost finished with a collage called "Subjectively Yours," but it needs something to balance the relationship between the blue ghost lady and the cool lady in the jodphurs.

I tried a few scraps hanging around on my table, to get an idea of what would and wouldn't work. Clearly everything one adds to a collage will have some sort of visual meaning, but certain scraps can bring a strong literal impact as well. For example, birds. Ubiquitous creatures, birds. But some more than others. This particular heron is a clip from a piece of gorgeous Japanese paper, and clearly is not at home in what has shaped up to be a rather Southwestern color pallette.
 

The next candidate is a seat stub from a recent train ride. That blue is stylin'! But both the numbers and the days-of-the-week boxes, even if cut up and separated, would push the composition in what I can only call an actuarial direction. This would take away some of the soft dreaminess of the piece.

I've never met a map I didn't like, but once again, maps bring strong associations to a work. And while there can be journeys even in the smallest of steps, I feel that adding a piece of this map (which comes from a tiny book of French maps), would push the meaning of the work beyond the intimate. And I want the focus to stay on the intimate.

Next up is a stamp from an old collector's guide to postage stamps. Postage stamps, like maps, are iconic. I'm drawn to this stamp because of the bird-hunting text, and my ladies could definitely be hunting eggs. But it's the wrong typeface, the wrong color, and the wrong shape. Still it makes me think about adding more text to this piece.

But when I think of text that I might want to add, I realize that I have said everything that I want to say. Anything else would be overload. I also realize that the text at the top, which I made with an acetone transfer, is way too small for the role I want it to play. And there it is. All of I sudden I know what I have to do. I will make a tape transfer of that big "Subjectively Yours" text strip and then adhere it somewhere in the top two-thirds of the piece. Because the text strip will be transparent, I am hoping the words will look like an echo.  

I'll post the result. Thanks for listening.