Mashing Up, or Carefully Juxtaposing

 As a counterpoint to my more-or-less orderly stripe paintings, I like to mash things together in my works on paper. These are 11"x14" on Bristol, and they include collage, drawing, and painting.

I also love to cut up gelli plate prints, made with Golden OPEN acrylics, and put those parts together in ways that surprise me:

You can win a set of Golden OPEN acrylics, an 8"x10" GelliArts Gel Plate, and a 6" Speedball soft rubber brayer in this month's raffle. CLICK HERE TO BUY RAFFLE TICKETS.

The Visual Sentence

I have been experimenting with a process of assembling prints (from the gel plate and foam relief plates) into pieces, which reminds me of stringing words together to make sentences. Each print has a few elements - they are not just all-over patterns - and combining them offers a fresh approach to 'composing'. I learned this process from Joyce Silverstone at North Country Studio Workshops last January. See my post about it here. Whereas in a collage, your substrate determines the boundaries of the piece, in 'scrolling' (Joyce's term for the process), you assemble the parts without a substrate and make up the boundaries as you go along.

 

Above are a few pieces that I assembled visually, and then scanned the parts and put them together digitally. These are available as prints and products on Pixels/Fine Art America.

I will be teaching "The Visual Sentence" later this year in Montreal, and next year at Hudson River Valley Art Workshops. Stay tuned to my calendar.

Collage with Gel Printed and Painted Papers

This post follows the one on gel printed papers. The video shows me demonstrating the first part of a collage. I include my thoughts as I work, as many of you have said you find that helpful in understanding my approach to composition. This IS about composition; I make choices about where to put what by going one step at a time and focusing on a small bit of the piece, not by stepping back every five seconds to look at the whole. I will post Part 2 over the weekend. 

There is a part in this video where I consider choosing papers that "I like", and then say "I never do that". Generally I begin by choosing a variety of papers, VARIETY being my main concept. This means papers that are more or less solid color, some that are patterned or have type or texture, some in bright colors and some in neutrals, etc. For this collage I DID start with a few that I like, and the chose the rest based on getting some variety.

Gel Prints on Found Papers

I have been experimenting with making collage material by re-using existing papers. Newspapers, brown paper bags, magazine papers, and a discarded HUGE dictionary that someone left at the post office for the taking, have been my favorites.

One way I like to make collage papers is by gel printing. Here is a video about it. I will be teaching Monoprint Collage in Santa Fe this spring, and there are a few spaces available still. We will use the gel plate and other techniques for printing and painting collage papers, and then do and in-depth exploration of collage.

Sign up for the workshop here.

Gel Printed Envelopes

SUCH a fun way to experiment with gel plate techniques!  Printing on envelopes is fun, not precious, and gives you the opportunity to send your art pieces out into the world. This video features (and was inspired by) the song "Checks and Love Letters", by Bernice Lewis. Lucie Duclos, in Victoria, BC, is the one opening the mail, gushing over the collage papers I sent.

Here are some of the supplies I am using:

• The 12"x12" gel plate from Gel Press
• Golden Fluid Acrylics
• A 3" soft rubber Brayer
• Cheap Drawing Paper for off-loading the brayer and for stencils and masks
• Waxed linen thread, for masking
• Envelopes

Have FUN!
And if you feel like sending me checks or goodies, like collage paper, send to:
PO Box 45
Rupert, VT  05768