Holz Studio Sampling: Re-discovering Collage

So I had had a bit of a clunker day in the studio, so the next day when I went back, I allowed myself to try something completely different instead of trying to finish pieces that I’ve started over year ago. A new book had come in when I was on vacation, and I was chomping at the bit to take a look at it. The Art of Expressive Collage: Techniques for Creating with Paper and Glue by Crystal Neubauer

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Expressive-Collage-Techniques/dp/1440335850

I have admired Crystal’s work for a long time for its subtle color palettes and always stellar compositions.

I have so many processes and techniques in the studio, I forget about some for a while…. and while I’ve been incorporating different papers and material into my recent encaustic work, its been a while since that was the main component. I forget how much fun it is to forage through my collection and start tearing, cutting, ripping and burning edges! One of her projects was to assemble a collage within five minutes, not really thinking logically about it, just pulling together what intuitively felt right. A lot of my work involves research for the imagery, the text, and the process, and while I love that, sometimes it can be restrictive. It felt very freeing just to pull together what I felt like. Even though these didn’t have a lot of forethought, I am looking at them now and thinking that they still relate. Anything that I collect that comes into the studio usually has some type of relationship with nature. Its like everything gets filtered through a natural history perspective. And so the title for this series will be nature ephemera, (ephemera being my new favorite word that refers to found paper bits). I let the color of a fossil inventory book from the 1800s determine the color palette of the piece, and then I built around that. I tore up an old bird book that led me to pulling out old screens of nests and making new ones of leaves and eggs. I spent an afternoon just poring over all the different types of bird eggs there are, and the patterns and sizes and colors that they come in. Very fun. I carefully considered the shape and arrangements of the pieces, and then I countered that with some very loose painting and writing. I finished it up by working drawing back into and highlighting the change in value in certain areas.

Here are some of the in process shots.

just muddying up the panel a bit....