WORLD AS COLLAGE DAY 3

Hello All and welcome back to my studio!

THE SHORT TAKE:
First, another collage is here for your viewing pleasure!

 

And a small video – a pair of surprise visitors stopped by today – take a look HERE!

The collage work continues – nearly one a day, quite a few are spread out on the table. Beginning on March 1st, just one week from now, they will be posted daily; you’ll soon be seeing images in “real time”!

 

THE LONG READ:
Michelle brings up Georges Braque in her recent response to the Day 2 post! Thanks, Michelle, for all your comments! Let me add some words and links. BRAQUE, along with PICASSO, were some of the earlier twentieth century artists to “invent” collage, referring to it as papier collé (literally, pasted paper).  Another Braque collage is HERE. In these early collages, artists combined pieces paper within their images, using the adhered flat shapes to echo the painted or drawn fractured cubist forms. Many of the modernist artists of that time explored collage – HANNAH HOCH, KURT SCHWITTERS, MATISSE, etc. Then there are countless late twentieth century contemporary artists using collage – MOTHERWELL, for example. And HERE is a great link to the entire catalog of the Association of Hungarian Painters New Collages exhibition of 2012 in Budapest. The catalog opens to my piece in the exhibit, but please “flip” through to see the works of all my Hungarian colleagues who have inspired me over the years!
Late evening, started on another WORLD AS COLLAGE…
The impulse to work has intensified and I do so at a heightened pitch, with torrents of colorful paper scraps spilling over the work table. Thin cardboard boxes of paper pieces collected from travels, sorted by color; folders of collected paper bags and wrapping papers, of receipts and envelopes, concert, train and tram tickets, packets of cheap but brightly colored craft papers and even some rejected etching proofs – all await new purpose.

First I wrote: not to take this too seriously. Tonight I feel an oppositional impulse – to push this into something more intense than not, to move from play to deep meditation where urgency rather than calm are voiced. How to do that, I wonder – if indeed that is where to go – with such a playful medium?

The process is surprisingly complex, partly because of the visibility of both sides, but acts the complexity is inherent to the very act of any visual composition. How much is too much or too little? Whether to put that tiny blue scrap here or there – a quarter inch closer to the neighboring scrap or further away? Nearer to the top or to the bottom? How to balance without appearing too premeditated or over-thought?

As I slide the small scraps around, I marvel at the challenge and what it reflects. I am reminded of the title, of the reference to making whole the world – in this case pulling together fragments, but to what avail – to seek or speak? To sing or to shout?

Once a piece has found its place, I temporarily affix it with tiny torn bits of tape, relieved at the resolution of that particular challenge! And so it goes until somehow, the piece declares itself complete.

Good thing I’m starting early, I at first thought to myself… so as to have time to work the “easy stuff” out of my system sooner than later. Now I realize that there was nothing easy about it to begin with, on any level!
Once again, if you have time and inclination to respond, I welcome further questions and comments!

 

– Diane Sophrin
  Montpelier, Vermont
  February 23, 2022