Collage Therapy

Its been an exhausting, draining, demoralizing election season.

I have friends and family who made excellent arguments

for both (all) sides of the equation.  It was brutal.

While I am always optimistic, just processing the

last several months has taken so much energy.

And with depleted reserves I wasn't sure what I could concentrate on in the studio.  Voila!  I picked up an old favorite, Steal Like an Artist Journal,  and opened it up to this page:

So I had a plan to keep my hands busy while my mind wandered wherever it wanted to go.  I dug around and put the trash out on my table:

Then I got busy ripping, cutting and gluing....all therapeutic activities while waiting for the creativity muse to come by.

I turned this around by 90 degrees several times but clearly, it was too soon to get any real direction.

I kept pasting, sometimes aware of great frustration and other times mindlessly tacking things on.  I felt protective of the bee but realized that sort of defeated my original, freewheeling intention.

partial detail

I kept plodding along and then a word came to me - bam- just like that!  The word was "obfuscation."  Bingo.

Thats how I had felt all these months - obfuscated - and that was the confusing feeling I was getting right this minute from my unplanned collage.  The art was unclear, the paths were misleading and everything was made complex and disjointed.  Suddenly I had a bit of clarity.  I added my last piece, swept the remaining goodies back into the trash and stood up feeling much, much better.  This was no work of art but the block got moved, the feeling verbalized (or art-itized) and I am now ready to move forward.

Obfuscation

trash collage, 7.75" x 7.75"

Whether the election went your way or not, I hope you agree with me that we should all be motivated to do what we can to improve the quality of life for each other and to continue to work on those issues we deem important.  Here's to no more obfuscation!

Thank you Austin Kleon,

Cindy

p.s.  Click on his name for an interesting TED talk by him.

ASSEMBLAGE ART

Don't TRASH the Trash - There May Be Gold in the Dumpster

I was a fan of recycling before the word was coined.  It was not so much my ahead of the times environmental streak but more the challenge of making something, the fun of reusing stuff over and over to make new items.  My generation was not entitled to brand new everything and school projects meant a school wide cry for paper towel rolls, cigar boxes and old buttons.  I think this was critical for our creative development but it was what the society could afford at the time....I digress.

Because I so loved this game I have always been accused of saving every little doodad that might possibly have a new life.  So imagine the thrill I experienced the very first time I stumbled upon a piece of "assemblage art" at a bona fide art exhibition.  At the time the only thing I "got" was that there was a creative endorsement of my saving fetish.  WOW.

You can read more on assemblage from MOMA here  or an art history definition here, but my shortened explanation is an art piece, usually 3D, put together with found objects.  Simple enough?

Yes, and no.  I have never taken the time to study assemblage seriously enough to be really stellar at it  But some of the I issues I see which are critical to success include the archival-ness of materials used (will bugs eat that?), the incredible array of tools needed (how to shorten a piece of aluminum or wood), and maintaining a pleasing composition while still managing to convey a message or produce something beautiful.  

However, technique and knowledge have never been barriers to fun and every now and then I dive in such as I did with the piece above.  Altars always fascinate me and I wanted to create one of my own,

The problem was the wide array of my beliefs cant be summed up by any one figure.  Which got me started thinking about all the things that mankind worships, or grabs at in desperation...or (see where my mind runs...?)

Here is a detail of the work in progress.

"Finding" pieces and parts takes time and patience.  Sometimes one "find" inspires an entire piece, other times you have an idea and have to begin a "collection box" for stuff specific to the idea.

"One Size Never Fits All"

assemblage, still in progress

26" x 14"

And because I like to work on several pieces at once (and I was rummaging through my treasure troves of trash) I decided to create a "nest" as well.  Here is a photo of it in progress.

"The Best We Could With What We Had"

assemblage, still in progress

16" high x 15" wide

The funny little sticks and square tiles are making an "audition."  My quilting friend Ellen Lindner  loaned me that phrase because in her work she lays out lots of fabrics and shapes while making decisions.  She calls it auditioning...I love that.  So the little "maybe picket fence" of popsicle sticks you see are only trying out for the role...no decisions yet.

Come on over and play in my trash...perhaps then my husband will understand that all thoses bins and boxes hold the secret to future award winning pieces of art?!

REALLY into RECYCLE,

Cindy