The New York Collection

I ramble on every day about new and interesting things and it’s only on days like today do I think that maybe you’d like to see a collection in its entirety without having to travel to the other side of the planet. This is the main reason why I have the ‘collections’ tab along the top of this blog.

I’ve just updated this section to include The New York Collection. This collection is loosely based on ideas and themes on fashion and covers a huge chunk of my collage work created during this year, along with a few appropriate extras from previous years. This collection is currently touring New York State and is about to be shown as part of Syracuse Fashion Weekend on October 11th.

Some of the pieces featured in this collection are also available for viewing on my YouTube channel from multiple angles so you can experience the best possible viewing without leaving your armchair.

Enjoy!

Video Adventures

I’m not a video artist and I have no intention of becoming one. I do enjoy messing around with a video camera though and experimenting with how it can give me a different voice. It’s a useful tool too in that is can show aspects to my collages that a flat 2D photograph simply cannot capture.

I have a little channel on YouTube which is more for my own pleasure than anything. I am not looking for hits or popularity but for communication to those people who want to find out more about my methods and reasoning behind my creations.

There are some little pieces that could be classed as performative, others which are purely stop-motion. There are a few films from exhibition locations and also some of my collages. Lots of people who see my art at exhibitions say that they shimmer and have a different quality in real life than as a photograph so the videos help others who aren’t so lucky to see my work understand more about the subtle layers and alternative perspectives that  the work generates.

So, if you are interested in my video adventures find me on YouTube. If you’re not then that’s fine. I’ll still keep playing with my camera anyways.

 

White, Wait, and Want

I’ve made so much progress on this new 16″ x 16″ work that my fingers hurt. It all looks very straightforward at the moment but I am always thinking now of how this will potentially look when it is semi-destroyed at the end of the making process. Once this layer is peeled away the result should be almost lace-like. It will be translucent in places and fragile, oh so fragile. I’m confident of the results since I’m changing nothing about the materials I am using or the method of approach in the making. I don’t need any more test samples other than what I have, I just need to put in the hours to make this happen.

There’s going to be a lot of white in this piece. It’s might look a little futile and almost boring at the moment but it’s a really calming experience to be immersed in. It’s also exciting to know that I’m breaking new ground in my making processes. I want to skip to the end now and get this done so I can see if it will look and behave exactly how I imagine it.

I have a few titles floating around but I’ll use neither for a few days yet until I’ve secured a few more things in my mind. There’s some more progress I want to make first and then there’s a particular person I need to show this to before I reveal more details.

Some detail or other. About 3″ x 3″ in size

One Giant Leap

I’m stepping into the unknown now. The discovery of my collage ‘skins’ yesterday is so exciting. Whilst I’m thinking of what to do with these new test samples I’ve decided to push ahead with a large ‘skin’ 16″ x 16″ in size.

{I didn’t sleep much last night, I was too excited}

I’m bringing together everything I know, everything I have ever known, about my collage making and taking a giant leap into somewhere new. I’m looking at a new image to work on with the full knowledge know that out of its destruction in a few months time will come something amazing and unique.

{I don’t think I’ll sleep much tonight}

I don’t want to give away what the full photograph is. First I want to spend more time formulating my ideas and adding consideration to my methodology. The reasons for my choosing this photograph run deep into my very core. I’ve sat on this one for about 5 years considering what to do and where it should go and I think yesterday’s discoveries are finally going to lend the philosophical weight and psychological credibility to this photograph that I think it truly deserves.

{I don’t think I ever need to sleep again}

Everything is going to get a little strange and undoubtedly very uncanny. Roland Barthes will be with me. Werner Herzog will be there. Lee Krasner will undoubtedly be looking over my shoulder. I cannot fail in what I am about to do. The logic is flawless, the chaos is sublime.

I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

The Skin of my Art

After a short but decisive Eureka moment in the bath last night, I have destroyed the art I have been progressing on for the last month. It’s no easy thing to throw away a month’s work but I knew I could not continue with the negative frame of mind that I found myself in whilst looking at the thing. If I continued then I would be resigning myself to another few months of nihilism, depression, and rejection.

The choice is mine and the choice is right.

When I destroy work I usually rip it apart until there is nothing left. This is more a ceremonial procedure than anything. I have the only right to destroy the thing I have created so if I’m going to do it then I’m going to do it properly. As I tore apart the layers of this mess I felt a heavy weight lifting in my mind and an overwhelming sense of positivity filling my heart.

The fragments of what now remains fascinate me. The adhesives have bonded to themselves rather than the backing sheet  so these fragments simply peeled off like a skin. Through my wanton destruction I have discovered something fragile and beautiful. These delicate pieces speak louder and more eloquently than anything the original art in progress was ever going to be able to say. They are like little scraps of an old manuscript washed ashore from an ocean of chaos in my mind.

I’ll be framing these remnants and considering if the method from this madness has potential in creating new little ‘skins’ of collage. Lots of questions are now forming in my mind which need answering. Ideas forming. Realizations dawning. Things are morphing, merging, altering, distorting. The focus is realigning. The control again is mine.

Feeding the Nihilist

I’m inching my way across this latest piece but I’m really not feeling it. Usually my work is a way to reflect positively about myself and boost my self-esteem. This piece is just dragging me down and making me reluctant to continue. I don’t like being in this state of mind. If I don’t like what I see then how can I reconcile negative feelings and replace them with positive ones?

Some artists outpour their negativity to leave themselves feeling positive. I can’t do this. I have to create positivity to feed the positivity within me.

By working on this collage I’m simply feeding the nihilist inside me. I don’t know how I can continue but equally I don’t feel that I can give up and let the nihilist win. Perhaps I’m going about this in the wrong way and I need to step back and take a look at the wider picture.

Or even better, step away completely and work on something different for a while so that I have the mental tools to beat this.

Meanwhile back in the studio…

The chaos and mayhem is continuing. I am now working this piece upside down to minimise the possibility of falling into any familiar rhythms and patterns. There are 14 doll faces in this whole artwork and only a handful of them will be recognisable. This is a little 2″ x 2″ detail of Doll 4 in the great scheme of things so there’s a long way to go until I’ve finished this 16″ x 16″ paper collage.

An Artist’s Guide to Exposure

Exposure is a good thing. It can get an artist noticed by new clients. It can open new doors and enhance a CV. Exposure can bring with it opportunities never before imagined and forge new links in great places.

However, exposure will not support you and is not your friend. It will not put food on your table. It will not give you clothes or shelter. It will not pay your bills or support your family.

You can die from exposure.

The Alternative Workspace

There are often undulations in the surface of my artwork due to differences in expansion and contraction in papers and glue. I try to keep this to a minimum by flattening it out in various ways. Whilst the part I’m working on is wet nothing can touch it so I have to pile things up around it in the vain hope of smoothing out any differences and keeping the art looking pretty.

It’s no coincidence that my bookcase is full of appropriate books for my artwork creation. It seemed apt though that my copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein ended up on the top of the pile this morning. All my artworks seem to end up as visually poetic statements on destruction and reconstruction with a delicious slice of the uncanny thrown in for good measure. The content of my bookcase reflects my art just as my art reflects my bookcase. Beneath Frankenstein today lie books on Krasner, the theory of evolution and some stuff on quantum theory. Adjacent lies Hockney and volumes by Nabokov, Conrad, Hoffmann, and Poe.

I have more literature* and science here than I do art books.  This is part of my deliberate exploration into a wider artistic universe.

*Mostly 19th century. I have no explanation for this.

Aggressively Lucky

I parted with one of my artworks recently. Lucky was a 4″ x 4″ paper collage exhibited over in New York as part of Couture Fashion Week. She was never intended to be a stand-alone collage and was always meant to be part of a larger 16″ x 16″ collage which I’m currently working on.

So now I’ve reached the stage where I’m recreating Lucky again as part of this wider construct. It is very rare for me to revisit a photograph more than once so it is interesting to use this same little image and weave it into this artwork in a new and interesting way.

This will be a different, more aggressive interpretation. I will keep some elements true to the original so that she is recognisable but I will tear her apart in other ways. I’m deliberately working at a different angle so that I am not tempted to make the same moves that I made before. This is getting to be a whole lot of fun.