50 Collages Before Christmas

I have been busy with making more work and also jobs in the garden so I have been slacking when it comes to posting what I have done on this blog and my site. Number 10, Didn’t We Believe We Were Something?,  had a life of its own and was a detour from the original idea, which I may return to another time. The photographic elements are from my images of torn cardboard and a wall inside the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin.

Offering No10 of 50 Collages Before Christmas Didn’t We Believe We Were Something?  is the piece mentioned in the last post about which I was undecided how to proceed. I decided to go with the easy it wanted to go rather than impose the other idea on it. I’m happy I did and can still return to the other idea in some form on a later date. In producing this piece I’ve been caused to think, again, about the directions my work might take. The idea of this project was to give me some focus, but it’s actually engendering even more ideas: am I looking down the wrong end of the microscope?

I finished off a couple of collages to my satisfaction today and there’s another that I’m “sitting with” and may also be finished. Otto Lilienthal makes a return in 8/50 Keep an eye on Otto (above). I have a soft spot for this early pioneer of human flight and he appeared many times in the year of #Collage365. I love the shapes of his various craft and the nobility of his efforts.

There’s Possibly No Way To Say This (below) is No9 in the series and is comprised completely of photographic elements: my own photos, discarded prints from a photographer friend and material stolen from the web.

I also started a couple more pieces and it has been interesting how one piece in particular has taken a life of its own and the accidental proximity of a photograph near to the first stages of this work has sent me in a very different direction. Now I am in a quandry – do I make the piece as planned (which I know will work) or go with the new direction? I could attempt to do both but will be unable to exactly replicate the preparation so far. I’m excited to see what happens tomorrow!

The second of of 50 Collages Before Christmas is also the second of Abstract Drawings for Dummies. In some ways it is even more explicit than the first with greater description of what I have in mind and think while creating the piece. The basic structure is again circles and the title is possibly a question. We like to think things such as stone circles are permanent and unchanging yet it is clear many stones get moved, fall over, get taken away, get broken with hammers or shattered with fire. Perhaps the circles are the orbits of planets or asteroids. Possibly these orbits are more permanent even though the objects are moving. Were stone circles an impermanent way to mark the permanent patterns in the sky.

I have been busy with other things this week and was keen to get back into the studio yesterday and finish of some of the #Collage50 works in progress – but I started yet another one! Today I finished it off and made good progress with some others. So this is number 7 of 50 Collages Before Christmas. It is based round some photos I took on the wavecut platform on the foreshore at Roedean, East of Brighton Marina. I used to visit friends in Brighton years ago when I was still at art school – and before the Marina claimed my favourite section of the coast there! Quite a bit of two- and three-dimensional work I did in my final 2 years was inspired by that beach and it has continued  to spawn work ever since. For 12 or more years I have been toying with the idea of a major project I have titled “Tidelines” where I examine 7 of my long-loved sections of coast to see what it is in those places that makes them so special for me and compare them to 7 beaches places that I had never visited before to see if any of those places can be made special, or just become special to me. Brighton and Roedean beaches form one of those 7 long-term important places.

Don’t play with your memories, dear is the largest collage I have ever created at over 1m wide. Some might argue that the installation of #Letter365 in the Allsop Gallery, Bridport, at 33m long should count as a collage but the envelopes were not permanently affixed so I say not. Strangely, when I put it up to photograph it didn’t seem twice the size of the first ones in the series. I think I want to sork even larger!