Recently, I’ve been doing more fiction reading than anything else. Finally, and I do mean finally , I finished the audio book of Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall” on my walks & “The Spool of Blue Thread” by Anne Tyler and “Euphoria” by Lily King on the couch with my feet up.
Also, going to art exhibits. At the MFA in Boston, HOKUSAI, a Japanese painter and printmaker (17600-1849)who makes most of us look like we are dead asleep in the creative output department. They also had another unrelated exhibit of photographs taken by Japanese photographers following the Tsunami of 2011. Good lord is all I could say to that exhibit and marvel at those who brought an artist’s eye to the humanity amidst chaos and ruin. The Provincetown Art Association’s Robert Motherwell exhibit was my last museum stop.
All the while ideas for new photo projects were percolating. I’ve been thinking about doing a cardboard collage in the back of my mind for months. I had started collecting cardboard boxes several months ago. They were mounting up in the guest tub like some sort of large bizarre bather with khaki skin tones.
The Robert Motherwell exhibit had one of his collage pieces that consisted of two elements only: a long, vertical jagged-sided piece of cardboard and a robin’s egg blue Galouise cigarette pack positioned centered right, like a boutonniere. It was deceptively simple in its composition and totally lacking the “I am mystery” composition of many collages, yet, seemed perfect to me. It’s simplicity delivered a complicated impact.
Usually, most collages are just the reverse to my eye and taste: a deliberate complicated structure and netting of multiple elements that perhaps have a narrative thread but, almost unfailingly, I don’t seem to have the attention span for figuring it out. The overall initial aesthetic punch doesn’t usually land on me either. I’m not proud of this, you understand, I can see on second and third look that many seem to be put together with a grand intent as well as a deft touch. They simply routinely go over or under my aesthetic radar.
The collages of Robert Rauschenberg, however, always show up on my radar screen. He was another who famously experimented with all manner of every day materials and used cardboard boxes in his early work. Many of his collage pieces can contain multiple-elements –literally everything but the kitchen sink, and by God, I think I remember he used a sink once, too, but his composition almost always slays me. I couldn’t tell you why. It just does. Here’s just one example.
Romare Beardon is another artist whose collages combine abstract painting and realism that knocked me out when I saw a large exhibit of his work, many of them collages, at the National Gallery in Washington, DC. Here’s one of his.
He was described as using the paint of abstract expressionism and realism of newspaper clippings. Whatever it is, I can pick out a Romare Beardon collage or a Robert Rauschenber collage, nearly every time I see one, whereas other collage work I have to identify by the card next to it.
At any rate, I have been saving these cardboard boxes thinking about doing a larger scale (for me) collage in the back of my mind. Last week I threw out 99% of the boxes and kept only two that i thought might work. One had FRAGILE written on it. My preoccupation these days has been the realities of aging and I suspect that was my editor for these boxes.
Since I have always seen “vegetable dye transfer”, “pigment transfer” and “solvent transfer” on Rauschenberg’s work, I’ve decided to experiment with as many transfer techniques that I could research and do on my own. The only transfer process I am any good at currently involves using wax and that took me at least six months of experimenting so this could be a loooong process.
Rauschenberg was a master of many transfer processes. I’ll read other artists say they began experimenting with transfers in their driveway (air circulation was important!) after seeing his work. Some have even said that any experimentation in their work with alternative materials came directly from him.
So, maybe that’s why I’ve always been drawn to his stuff. Don’t know. But, in that tradition of experimenting with transfer, I am going to try my hand at some methods: acrylic pigment transfer and solvent transfers using xylene blender pen as well as Citra-solv. I’ve used the Citra-Solv degreaser years ago on National Geographic magazine pages but have never used it on a color laser photocopy of a photograph of my own. The YOUTUBE tutorials suggest I can use it, so I’ll try using it.
I’ll use laser color photocopies of a photo of a tree I’d taken years ago at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania that I had textured in Photoshop for one of the Citra Solv transfers and a yellow pepper laser photocopy for both Citra Solv and xylene blender pen. They tell you that inkjet photos don’t work. Finally, I’ll use a laser color photocopy of a white tulip/silver pitcher photo I’d textured and painted within Photoshop. The latter process involved painting photocopy and transfer surface with three coats of acrylic medium, letting them dry individually, and then with a final coat of acrylic medium on the transfer surface, put them together and wait 24 hours till they dry before trying to moisten and scrape away the paper. That process I shall do today after the 24 hour drying period. It better be good cuz good lord it involved a lot of steps.
So, I’ll start with the faster ones, first. Ones that I could see I screwed up right away instead of having to wait 24 hours to see that I screwed up. Solvent transfers on the yellow peppers on Rives BK textured paper. Then, the Valley Forge tree on a smoother, lighter BK Rives paper. And, o, yes, I actually began with the photo of feet transferred on to Rives BFK paper by applying an acrylic matte and varnish to the photocopy and mounting it on the paper to dry.
One thing I can tell you right now: I cannot get all the paper off of these acrylic transfers. Another order of patience or skill is required than is currently in my tool box. Anyway, the next few posts will share some of the transfers and maybe a few transfers on to cardboard just in case that might end up in zee-grand- coakley-collage. Ha.
