October 22, 2013
These are a few more digital collages similar to earlier
handmade collages.
Most of the collages I have been posting in recent weeks
are, as I have stated, more experiments in learning to use Photoshop than what
I would ultimately like to see my work in digitality become. I think that I have been assuming that my own
aesthetic will come back into play once I have gathered enough digital material
to create my own collages but I’m realizing that I have a number of different
directions in mind and so, in fact, do not have anything specific. I’ve been enjoying ‘playing’. Last weekend I created a number of ideas for
sculptural collages that I may post later.
My collaborator, Jeff Smith, proposed last week that I stop
casting around experimentally and concentrate on a body of work that focuses on
exactly what it is I think I want to express.
Jeff stumped me, in a way, by asking me what it is exactly that I want
to make art about and I’ve spent the last week thinking about this rather than
creating any new files.
I’ve been thinking about the history of collage and
Levi-Strauss’ description of a ‘bricoleur’ as someone who constructs or
‘hobbles together’ new expressive forms from materials found on hand. On the other hand, Picasso pasted chair
caning onto a painting to make the painting more ‘real’ in a physical sense and
less illusory. Kurt Schwitters, my
favorite collage artist, made collage from everyday ‘scraps’ but ‘scraps’ that
were contemporary to the culture he was addressing rather than old or ‘vintage’
materials in the ‘collectable’ sense.
My own feelings about collage over the years have been
inclined toward the idea that ‘spent’ cultural materials (throwaways and materials
that do not still have cultural currency or symbolic status) can be reused to
create new expressive statements and that content and meaning can be arrived at
intuitively in formal compositions through the juxtaposition of disparate pieces
of ‘material’ be it paper, text, or images.
It reminds me that there is an element of surrealism that I had
forgotten about.
I have also always thought of collage as a paragon of memory
in some sense in that memories do not often follow any logic or rational
chronology. One writer in the local
paper called memory a “drawer of random thoughts” and I agree. Most of us know this intuitively and know
that a smell, for example, can easily trigger a memory of some kind.
It is this ‘trigger’ that I think I’m looking for in the
work that I hope to create. If I can
make a statement of what I think my aesthetic purpose is, I’d have to say that
I want to create work that addresses the indelible sadness of being that we all
experience as time passes and things change or fade. We find some compensation for this sadness
only in spirituality or aesthetics. I
believe that anytime we experience an aesthetic ‘rush’ or ‘thrill’, we are
experiencing a release of sorts from that inevitable sadness. An ‘authentic moment’ of being as Heidegger
would have put it.
With this in mind, I will try to embark on a series of
collages, using the Bric-o-browser that Faham has created, to see if I can be
more specific about my aesthetic purpose.
These collages will by dynamic in that they are still connected to their
digital source and will change over time as sites change.
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| Book Collage #1 Spell Book |
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| Digital Collage #105 |
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| Digital Collage #106 Rant |
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| Digital Collage #107 |
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| Digital Collage #114 Pair |
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| Digital Collage #118 |
I’m still trying to figure out how to speak of aging and
change on the internet. I’m also
thinking of trying to use contemporary detritus rather than the types of
‘vintage ephemera’ available online.
