Collage and Review

Fallen off, lately. Tomorrow, I will listen to a grants panel review my latest work. It will be interesting to hear their thoughts, as this is something one often does not get from a group audience. I have to sit silent and just listen, which means it will just be their reaction to the work (and my brief write up, I suppose) rather than to interactive discussion, influenced by back and forth dialogue with me. The intent, to the extent relevant, will by definition have to stand out from the work itself.

So much is and has been collaged that it's interesting to watch a viewer be distracted from the image quality by the fact that the image was collaged from a bunch of different materials that the viewer was not necessarily expecting.
Collaging is it's own way of thinking and piecing together images, first and foremost because the bits ("marks") carry with themselves their own image references to be emphasized and/or deemphasized and second, because in the end pasting bits is quite different physically and emotionally from boldly striking a line across a page with graphite or paint or shaping a clay vessel. While adding bits conceptually does nto stray that far from accumulating dots and other marks, the collaged bits ("marks") are preselected rather than simply made as a collage bit must be collected and/or cut. Applying/adhering/compiling the bits involves the hand but separated from the paper or other surface upon which the pieces are attached/adhered.

Collage like method does get evaluated differently. Perusing the web in a current moment of procrastination, I have started to think more about the issue of whether relelatively mediocre work -- in the sense of the ultimate imagery -- gets a leg up by being done with novel or different means or method. The post it or push pin face is not judged by how amazing a portrait it is, but rather how "amazing" it is that it was made of post-its or push-pins, even if, in the end, the same image painted would be rather innocuous, perhaps in some cases rather badly rendered.