re: chapter 4: collage

'family portrait' is collection of framed panels.  i love how the ugly frames work in this piece.

collage is the way that i work.  it is as natural a part of the process as drawing itself.  but i don't use print media.  in fact, i'm really pretty terrible at cutting and tearing out magazine and other print media pieces to tell a story.  it's better when i make my own.  but everything starts from the idea of layering individual images and patterns into a conglomerate narrative.  and typically i layer them onto an already-collaged-together surface of assembled items, creating many layers of layers.

this piece is 'untitled'.  it is a stencil collage layered together.  there is so much to discover in its many layers.

the way i understand 'collage' is as a verb meaning: to assemble items, taken out of their original context to create a new conglomerate context, which is built from the context of each individual assembled out-of-context item.  and this follows through for everything i collage with.  the images and patterns work the same way.  they all have their own context.  and when i combine them together the narratives come out, but they don't come out in watercolor.  they develop out of their own back stories; their own context.

a bit more intentional than many of my other works, 'ed-u-ma-cation' tells a more direct story, but all the layers of pattern and objects give it a context that touches closer to home than if i just put these images on canvas.  that tray is meaningful.  so is the drawer and the denim jacket with the capitol on it. see this post for more details.

this is how stories gain depth and richness, and the strength of visual narrative, is its ability to only suggest a narrative, and allows the viewers mind to tell the story.  thereby, making it relatable.  suggest a direction but do not lead or insist.  i like that my work can be hypocritical.  that means that there's not too much there as to tell the viewer exactly the route to take or story to tell.  i like that some of them start to become like scavenger hunts, where the viewer just starts looking to try to find all the different images in the work.  that searching then becomes part of the narrative.  collage is just working in a contemporary drawing method.  there are many layers to living and collage mimics that.