I have been aware of collage as a medium for a few years now, ever since I followed a then-grad student on tumblr who mentioned that she occasionally did collage. This was the time that I first heard of Mod-Podge. Not too long after that I acquired my own jar of Mod-Podge and then it sat untouched for many years.
Then one day a couple months ago, I was sorting through the mail, already a daunting task, when I saw the mailer from the Philadelphia Flower Show. The envelope itself was bright green with glowy collages of flowers on it, and the pamphlet inside was likewise decorated. The stamp though, was what truly captivated me with its simple pink flower. I was seized with a sudden need to COLLAGE.
I took some card stock that I had saved from a chocolate bar (thanks, Kinder!) and but it in half into the perfect size for a book mark. I located my years-old Mod-Podge and began to work. While the glue dried I worked on my actual work and when my code was running I cut and glued and sealed with the Mod-Podge with abandon. I made two bookmarks that day.
The spam we get in the mail proved to be full of colorful paper and so I sorted through it, looking for interesting colors and photographs. I soon started a messy collection that I stuffed into one of my extra clear folders. I then created a mini collage of a floral still life, because I really have one guiding principle in art: when in doubt create, flowers or a self portrait.
This was when I started really thinking about my collage technique. I made one large (ish, this was a miniature collage, about the size of two bookmarks, or one Kinder chocolate bar) flower as the center piece, pieced together from the red of a dress, the dress’s tag serving as the stamen of the flower. I used some already existing photos of flowers as well and this was a pivotal moment. I felt as though using pictures of flowers as flowers in my collage was cheating. The interesting part was that I was creating flowers out of things that were not-flowers. I let it stand for this collage but it sent me down a path.
My next collage was another floral still life, but it was bigger this time. Inspired by a photograph, I was trying to recreate the color palette but I was finding my collection of paper for collaging to be barely sufficient and I wasn’t entirely happy with how it turned out. I wasn’t paying enough attention to the colors of the table and as such, the table was taking too much attention away from the flowers.
Parallel to these I was also finally working on my art journal. This involved tearing out a bunch of pages out of a book I didn’t want to read (acquired from my library’s book sale, so it was a book no one else wanted to read either) and then collaging and painting all over it. The first one I started was to collect my traveling ephemera and memories. We’ll come back to this.
The next collage picture I started working on was extremely large and this time on watercolor paper, as the rippling effect from the wet then drying glue was starting to bother me as I tried more seriously with my collages. I had acquired a bunch of cheap photographic books from a second hand book shop and I was ready! I started work on a dark table setting with lots of flowers but then I ran out of steam. As of this writing, this one is still not yet finished.
I have however started two more art journals in a similar collage-y fashion. One will serve as a gallery of art and artists that I like. Another I don’t yet know, but I am making it out of a science encyclopedia (again from the library book sale) that is from my birth year, so presumably the information contained within is wildly out of date at this point. But the photos are nice!
I found that initially working on these collages was a fun hobby where I got to relax but still make something creative that I didn’t care much about. But as I got more into it, I did start caring a lot and I found that I wasn’t doing any other art. The collage had become the art. And yet I still didn’t really feel like I was making art. I was just gluing pieces of paper together.
The gallery book is sort of a more evident manifestation of this, but I began to think of collage rather less like art and more like curation. But I wasn’t taking photos wholesale and putting them together, so even “curation” doesn’t fit. I want to declare it to be art, and to be sure there is a lot of skill involved (especially ones I have yet to master! See, rippling of paper, the use of a crafting scalpel, etc.), but I didn’t feel like I was making art when making collages and it was taking my creative energy away from the things that I do consider art, like my paintings.
I want to think of my collages as art. But I’m not quite there yet. Considering that I have a large amount of paper waiting to be cut up for collage, I’m not done with it yet, and in the meantime I’m researching the history of the art form. I think I’d like to write a little article about it on my Substack.
So far, I’ve been most captivated by the “paper mosaiks” of Mary Delany, an aristocrat from 18th century England, who made some absolutely stunning botanical art made out of pieced together paper, rather like I had been attempting to do! The flowers were absolutely stunning and even really zoomed in on the photos of these, it is hard to tell that they’re not paintings. The leaves are where I think the illusion falls apart a bit I think, so I kind of want to do a benchmark collage where I try to improve on her example with foliage.
Other examples of historical collage I’ve seen have been the “hobbyist memorabilia” of photo collages from the Victorian era and the modernist, abstract stuff from the early 20th century that I just don’t have an interest in on principle.
So far I’ve only found Mary Delany. So maybe that’s where I’ve landed. Collage is curation, careful selection of colored paper, photographs, and elements found in other art, pasted together in a new configuration. And the art of what I’m trying to do is the “paper mosaiks” as Mary Delany termed them. Taking colored pieces of paper and trying to realistically render something.
I’ve put a bunch of books on the subject of collage, including on realistic collage and a biography of Mary Delany, on my hold list from the library, so I’ll be diving deeper into the subject. And of course I still have that giant collage to finish (though for the record, I think it’s my last giant one. I want to stick to slightly smaller ones from now on).