Art I'm Making: New Collages (February 2015)

It's already the end of March, but the most recent collages I've posted previously on this blog are from early February. Here are two more, both from later in that month--Untitled Collage No. 89 (Santa Rosa) and Untitled Collage No. 90 (Santa Rosa). I started making collages in the third week of July 2013. I set out to make one collage a week at that time, thinking it would be useful to be steadily productive--not because quantity matters, but because the process of working matters. Each new collage is an attempt to better what I've done before. Each one is a new attempt at solving the problem of creating a compelling composition. As of today (March 28, 2015), I've finished 95 pieces. To stay on schedule, I should have completed 104 by the third week of July in 2015, two years after my start. Thus, I have to complete nine more pieces in the coming 14 weeks--which is to say I'm somewhat ahead of schedule. The discipline has been very good. The more I make the better the work gets. I hope to continue at this pace for the foreseeable future.

Untitled Collage No. 89 (Santa Rosa) is a bit of a departure for me in that it uses more scissor-cut shapes than usual. I feel sometimes I rely too much on the paper cutter, that I use too many straight lines. Certainly, straight lines have their place, but I'm consciously trying to use more irregular shapes. In particular, this piece uses a comb-like shape that works rather well, I think. Untitled Collage No. 90 (Santa Rosa), shown below, uses more straight-edged shapes again, but these are strongly offset by the swirls in the deep lavender paper. This piece, too, is somewhat unusual for me in that I've used a piece of semi-transparent mulberry paper, which shows but transforms the colors and shapes behind it.

Click on the images for a larger view. For more, use the Art I'm Making tab to the right or visit my collage website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ (requires Flash Player). Come see my work in person during the Art at the Source open studios event, June 6 & 7 and June 13 & 14, 2015--at Studio 48, in Sebastopol