National Collage Society - Small Works Exhibit

 It's pretty early to "officially announce" this (i.e., maybe something better will emerge), but I believe this will be my entry into this year's NCS small format exhibit. We'll see...

It's "always something", it seems

I was on a bit of a roll with posting on this blog during the first half of January. I anticipated a pause as I was preparing my paper for the Southern Humanities Conference in San Antonio. The trip went well and the paper was well-received, I think. I had to get back into the swing of things at school, upon my return. THEN things got really bad at Utica University. The Board of Trustees, and the administration, has announced the elimination (they call it "sunsetting") of numerous programs at the school, including philosophy, geology, sociology, anthropology, chemistry and therapeutic recreation. I feel like I have experienced another death in my life. Higher education has been on a downward spiral for decades, and I have always spent a good deal of time and effort, fighting the degradation of academics at the institutions at which I have been on faculty. But, I finally feel like I have lost the battle. It's really quite sad. BUT, perhaps it's liberating as well, for me. I am privileged to be approaching 64 years of age and approaching retirement (I could retire this week, if I wanted to). But my heart breaks for my younger colleagues and for the entire institution of higher education. It's all about the tuition money-grab and job-training (which I don't consider "higher education". I need to extract myself emotionally now, and do the best job I can do as a university professor in my classroom. I will certainly have much more time to devote to collage soon. In the meantime, I will share these two images, that I found while cleaning and organizing my collage stash last night. I LOVE these weird images! That's why collage is DEFINITELY the medium for me. When I am not creating collage, I thoroughly enjoy looking at all of the interesting images!

Sketch or piece?

Have I mentioned lately that I love collage? ;-)

So... I can't decide if this is a sketch, or a finished piece. I will decide tomorrow (or in days to come). I won't make a "permanent" decision if I have enjoyed some beer. I do love it though.

Exhibition proposal

I submitted this exhibition proposal to one of our excellent local art galleries. If anyone sees this and might be interested, please let me know.

 

First piece of 2023!

I'm very excited to have completed this piece today! I had posted a "sketch" of the composition in an earlier post. It's nice to have it completed. It's strange that I do not have a title for it, as of yet. Typically, titles emerge for me very freely. I just don't have it for this one yet. The image of this young woman was so compellingly beautiful. When I saw this single page at the auction in Pennsylvania last year, I just HAD to have it. I was worried that I would hang on to it for too long, waiting for a very special moment to use it. But the composition emerged fairly quickly in the studio at the end of 2022. The cactus flower elements are from a calendar that used to belong to my mother-in-law, Peg; who passed away unexpectedly last October. A-HA! As I wrote that, a title just emerged.... "In Memory of Margaret". Yes!

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

 Happy New Year to one and all! I am looking forward to a creative and productive year ahead. And I wish the same for all of you. One of my resolutions for the year is to "get my chops up" with regard to my music-playing (it will take some hard work to get to where I was prior to the pandemic). But I will also continue to create collages throughout the year; and I am looking forward to "stretching" a bit with my collage work. I have TONS of large frames, even though my work tends to be small (usually smaller than 16" x 20"). So I am looking forward to trying some large format pieces. I have also recently been experimenting with abstract works comprised of architectural elements. Here are some initial "sketches"...

Holiday surprise

 I have had a couple of unfortunate experiences over the past several years of finding an element that I REALLY would like to use, only to have it "ruined" by the ink from the reverse side bleeding through after coating. For example, when I coated this iconic image from LIFE magazine, ink from the reverse side of the page bled through...

Of course, the question of whether to use such an emotionally-charged and sensitive image is the topic of another post, perhaps. The point that I am trying to make is that the coating process can sometimes "ruin" an element. I only had this example; but it has happened a number of times. I tried using this colored mat to test whether I could make the element "work". But I was not satisfied. Some folks have suggested that I make a photocopy of the element, and coat that. Sorry folks, I only do analog collage -- so that option is not going to be a remedy.

The same bleeding-through happened with this element (but I didn't take a photo of the "ruined" image):

Which brings me to my holiday surprise. I recently came across this image -- which I was very excited about using as a compositional element:

When I coated the page (it was very thin paper -- newspaper-like), the ink from the reverse side bled through. Once again, I was very disappointed that the image was rendered "unusable". Instead of throwing it out, I set it aside in a pile in the standard chaos of my studio. When I was cleaning my studio a bit this week, I was very pleasantly surprised to find it, and discover that the bleed through had disappeared (perhaps as a result of thorough drying?). I'm re-energized to work with this element. I suspect you will recognize it in a new composition for 2023!