One Hot Mess

When last we spoke, I had glazed Margaret's background and had selected the focal image. Here they are together.

Collage background by Margaret Orr, photo from the collection of Mrs. Inman.

The next step was to begin to integrate the two pieces. How could I express the concept I had developed in my last blog? You might recall that I had chosen to investigate the power of media in our belief systems, how and whether it causes magical thinking, and what that thinking might look like when expressed visually.

The full name of this stuff is Lesley Riley's TAP. It has serious potential, but is rather costly. (That brown stuff you see is a silicon sheet for protection against the heat.) I got my TAP from a going-out-of-business internet craft company on a deep discount. Pays to shop.

And then, because it was the hottest and most humid day of the year, and my studio is an upper loft space with two skylights and little air circulation, I reached for my iron and a material I had never worked with before: Transfer Artist's Paper. I read the directions. Simple enough. Print your image on the paper and iron it down. Ha! Being of a fine woodwoorking background, I have in my time repeated “measure twice, cut once” and “try it on scrap first” as a mantra. But we all have lapses no?

I was going for a frame-within-a frame look here, kind of a television within a television. This was not what I had envisioned, to say the least.

And this is what happens when you don't practice on scrap first. You get one hot mess. Luckily for me, I had a bunch of prepped canvases, boards, and other backgrounds lying around, so I was able to continue my ironing frenzy well into the evening. With varying degrees of success. I mean, who wouldn't want to take advantage of the hottest, most humid day of the year to run one's iron at full heat?

As for this piece, not to worry. Lemonade will be forthcoming, one hopes.

On Intentional Design

Collage background by Margaret Orr (http://hogret.deviantart.com)

In my last blog post, I rotated a collaged background through all four orientations to find the one I liked the best. That's it, shown above.

Collaged background with yellow ochre glaze

To unify the diverse elements, I gave the background a couple of thin washes of glaze. I like how it turned out. I used yellow ochre glaze because not only did I want to warm up Margaret's umber splotches, I wanted to highlight the tones of the various papers, and I know yellow ochre will do that. I sing the praises of yellow ochre glaze.

While working with the glaze, my imagination was exploring different concepts for the piece, as inspired by the background paper and color. The thing about collage is that it is inclusive of virtually all choices, and in my shop I have collections chock-full of choices. Depending on the day, all this choice can be liberating or frustrating. Mostly it's frustrating, and I find that by working “intentionally” (as opposed to “intuitively”), I can give myself both the creative direction I need and the potential to maximize the development of my ideas.

Here's how it works in practice. Consider the process of selecting an old photograph for a focal image to place atop this background. I've already noted in my last blog that I wanted to feature that bit of text on the right about the “power of the magic of believing.” While the message of this text could easily lead one to think of cheery birds and butterflies, there is another direction here begging to be explored.

Girl with Coral Beads, collection of Art-e-ology

When searching through stock photos for images that might be complementary to the second interpretation, I came up with pictures like this.

Blank-Staring Family, collection of Mrs. Inman

And this.

Article by Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone magazine, July 7-21, 2011

And then, as a sort of test drive, I snipped around the image and put it down on a magazine article that I happened to be reading...and isn't it coincidental that the colors in the magazine drawing and the colors in Margaret's background are similar? By George, I've got it! My vote is now officially cast for the family with the blank stares. As I attempt to incorporate this photo into the collage, here's the concept I'll be keeping in mind: the power of media in our belief systems, how and whether it causes magical thinking, and what that thinking might look like. Stay tuned...!

One Background Four Ways

A collage background arrived in the mail yesterday. For collaboration. From South Africa. From my good friend Margaret. You can view her extraordinary collage/mixed media/jewelry work here:  http://hogret.deviantart.com . I like Margaret's background because it is vibrant in all four views. But how to pick the view that's right for me?

Background View #1

View #1. Because of its contrast with the other colors, that green stripe is dynamic. In this view, because it dominates the area just below center, it would most likely be covered up eventually with whatever the focal point turns out to be. That would make me sad. But I like that old magazine page (1953) at the top. The brown splotches at the bottom ground the composition and the white dots are interesting elements. I don't particularly like the location of the scissor tape framing, but this is definitely a workable view. Is it just me, though, or does this orientation look too predictable? I am not finding wit here, and I do so enjoy wit!

Background View #2

View #2. The descent of the brown splotches from the top edge is, frankly, depressing, especially with the contrasting lightness of the white dots, which remind me of falling snow. There's a lot of movement here, but it's a bad sort of movement for me. It feels claustrophopic, especially since the sharp angles and paper tape border are pushing my eye to the lower left-hand corner. Since, according to Margaret, most people approach a piece of art from the upper right hand corner, this relentless drag of my eye to the bottom could be an issue. Fighting the tension of this movement could overtake my meaning and dictate my content. I like to be in control of my content. #2 is officially off the table.

Background View #3

View #3. Darn! This view also has the falling brown splotches contrasted with the sparkly snow dots. However, the scissor tape is more amiably positioned at the left side of the canvas and the green strip is now above the centerline, which I like. Not crazy about the text being upside-down at the bottom because it is lost there. I know already that I want to incorporate this text into my content, but its position here would make that a stretch. Overall, I find a jarring randomness in this view—the horizontal slashes of paper, the descending splotches and dots. Unless I wanted to make an anxious piece, where a background like this would reinforce and energize my foreground, this would just get in the way. Of course I could slop on paint to neutralize the composition, but I would rather listen to the paper. http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2011/06/listening-to-paper.html

Background View #4

View # 4. Of all the orientations, this one seems to naturally align itself into thirds, at least to my eye. This is a good thing, proportionally. The scissor tape is holding the left and bottom edges, another good thing. The brown splotches are back to being design elements rather than harbingers of doom. The white dots are back to being dots, not snow. In this view, the composition appears to be neutralizing itself. If I work carefully, I can preserve some of that delicious green at the top, I think. And I know I can keep the text snip visible in the finished piece. Can you tell I'm getting excitied about getting to work on this? View #4 it is!

But wait! First things first! What orientation would you pick?

Stay tuned for next steps.

Listening to the Paper

Light Unlimited, 2010
Gel transfer on paper

I love to collage with scrapbooking papers. They're delicious confections of color and line. Cheap, too—on sale, a handful of small change will buy a big 12 x 12 sheet. Admittedly, scrapbooking papers can be a bit of a challenge to work with, especially when those papers have forceful patterns. But even neutral scrapbooking papers pose design risks. Every paper—indeed every art material—has its own place in the vast continuum of visual meaning, and just because a paper is beige with a muted vintage-looking script doesn't mean it will not assert itself, sometimes in aggravating ways, in your piece of work.

Man of the House, 2010
Acetone & gel transfers/paper

One way to make the paper behave—and a popular trend in recent mixed-media publications—is to tone it down with a slap of paint. For those who prefer to let their work evolve spontaneously, this treatment takes away much of the risk of the paper overwhelming the work.

It also takes away much of the spirit of the paper.  

Two Medicine Lake, 2010
Tape transfer/old postcard/paper

A different approach is to forgo that coat of paint in favor of hosting—before gluing—a heart-to-heart talk between the piece you want to make and the paper you're thinking of using. Put it all on the table! Proportion, directionality, balance, tension, composition, and more, if you can think of it! What does the paper offer to your idea? How can you best harness its aesthetic to serve your concept? If there's a balance to strike, where exactly is it?

Who knows what will happen if you let the paper speak.

The Textures of Loneliness

Brave Red Boat, 2011

A lone man in a boat facing landward. On the bow trim, a "five" and a "five," but a ripped medallion in the center shows that two fives don't add up to a perfect ten. Nor will they ever again. I created this piece out of overpowering empathy for my father, a commercial fisherman, who has recently lost his co-pilot of over 60 years, my mother, in a fashion that was as accidental as it was tragic. When I was building the layers of papers and ink in this piece to create depth and texture, I was speaking to the passage of time and the layers of memory that both deplete and enrich us as our losses begin to accumulate. In hand collage, it's a trick to add stuff on top of more stuff without the piece becoming about the stuff, the message obscured. I don't always get it right, but this time I feel that I walked the line.

The materials and techniques I used in this piece are simple. This seemed fitting. My mother and father were children of the Great Depression, and they embraced simplicity in all aspects of their lives even in prosperous times. My Dad's grief is profound but simple in its intensity. Not for him the psychology of steps of grieving. To create the various layers, I started with paper--text from a 1936 postage stamp collector's guide from the library's free shelf and assorted other vintage publications. And an old photo, from which I made a transparency by laying on coat after thin coat of an acrylic gel medium. Yes, I sat at my worktable and watched each coat dry. Then came dye inks the colors of silk saris to hint at the strange, the other, the mystery of the passage from life. I finished up with some glazes I concocted from cheap acrylic paints. My mother would have admired my frugality.

With love and time and kindness and understanding, I hope the man in the boat will be able to reverse his land-locked course and set sail on his beloved high seas again.