Big Blue Moon

Gel transfers are so much softer than tape and acetate transfers, and sometimes that softness is just right. Acetate transfers were all the rage a while back, and I know you can burn the edges of acetate and underpaint it for goulish effects and roll it up into Christmas ornaments and such. And nothing beats a packing tape transfer for adding gray tones to the work (not to mention the joy of upcycling such a commonplace material).

But I find myself, these days, returning to the humble (albeit labor-intensive) gel transfer for pure workability. In particular, there are no hard edges to figure out how to hide. Which can be a Big Thing. You know, you have something to say, and you want to say it, to flat-out-work-to-express that "something"  to the best of your ability. Everything you know about various techniques cooks in the background (and I hasten to add that I love learning new techniques), but at the end of the day, it's not really about the techniques, is it?

Here's one of my recent collages that incorporates a gel transfer. That would be the lady, whose skin you can see through to the paper beneath. It's easy to lose count of the number of coats it takes for me to do a transfer (because there's so much drying time in between the multiple thin coats of the gel medium), but it's safe to say this one took at least half-a-dozen.

Big Blue Moon, 5 x 7 paper collage with mixed media. Laura Tringali Holmes, 2012

The photo is one from my personal collection. No idea who this lady is--I pulled her from a sun-scorched box at a flea market, and I'm delighted that I can keep her spirit alive in my work. The background paper is from a book of manners for French jeunes fille published in the 1800s. The moon is cut from handmade paper that has blue-next-to-green, my favorite color combination. The little text strip at the bottom is from a New York plantsman's catalog, also from the 1800s.

What you can't see is the sound that filled my ears while I was constructing this piece (in my loft, I typically work to a lovingly constructed iPod playlist, simply called "Collage"). Cheers in particular to Joni Mitchell's "Night Ride Home," and this lyric in particular:

Once in a while
In a big blue moon
There comes a night like this
Like some surrealist
Invented this 4th of July

 
As always, thanks for tuning in.