Over the past couple of years, I've been working more digitally than not when it comes to collages. Since I spend a great deal of time in front of a computer for all other sorts of reasons, it make sense that some artmaking would happen. I do a lot of cover designs and library graphic work working with photo editing software, and many times, something I do will spark a new series of collages (for example, last years murder mystery poster led to the hunger palace collages, which then led to the cryptotaxonomy zine pieces. I like the neatness and exactness of working digitally, as well as being able to use the entire internet as your toolbox in terms of images..need a creepy doll's head? A toy horse? and octopus? Google and ye shall receive. My collages also wind up neater--no wayward scissors or glue smears or random cat footprints. I've been saving my analog efforts for things like painting and printmaking, but doing most of my collage on the screen.
Paper is different. You have to work with what you have. But as we talked about after last year's Art on the Cheap panel, sometimes this leads you places you might not otherwise go. Over the holiday break, I cut into a stack of Time magazines from the 1960's which I knew would be ripe with clippable things and while it feels limiting in some ways, I think those limitations cause me to actually be more creative with what I do have. Perhaps the closest analogy I think of is writing poems with formal constraints and how much magic can happen that wouldn't otherwise. So I'm collaging and I don't have a shoe, but I have a breadbox or a vacuum cleaner or a woman's head. What happens when you put all these things together.? When you have to put these things together because there really isn't anything else on the table in front of you?
