Hard to believe that I am now at the end of 52 weeks of collaging – producing at least one collage a week. Led by Randel Plowman, the workshop has consisted of a prompt a week covering different aspects of collage from figure/ground to colour theory, and surrealism to socio/political commentary.
Figure/ground 
Complementary 
Trinkets 
The clock is ticking 
Uncanny
It has encouraged me to experiment and to learn more about my own strengths, preferences and developing style. I have discovered I prefer a warmer palette and generally some red shows up somewhere. I prefer to work in a more abstract style and I enjoy a mix of torn and cut edges. I am not that keen on working with ephemera and representational work, I have seen others work with it incredibly successfully but I don’t find it inspires me.
Deck the Halls 
Swift River 
What have you learned? 
Empty nest
I very much like working with alternative techniques like the decollage, cyanotype and CitraSolv experiments. I was slightly thrown by the Cyanotype because it created an image in its own right so it took me a while to work out how to use it as part of a collage. I have also discovered I am quite good at spotting patterns and making connections, this worked particularly well in the mash up and uncanny exercises.
I found I sometimes got frustrated by the speed of creating collages and would have loved to gone into making a digital piece, but took this as a sign to slow down and take time. I didn’t manage to complete something every week but did complete about 85% of the prompts, which I am pretty pleased with. It was certainly more of a commitment than I had imagined but it was a really good discipline for doing something creative every week. I still have the prompts to work on in future too!
I am very excited by this week’s results where we were asked to explore our signature style. I have found that I work better with a theme or concept so refined the open brief by giving myself the task to work on ‘joy.’ I often find the collages then name themselves based on the materials I use. I knew I wanted to work on an abstract piece but combined representational pieces as well as shapes and colour that give me joy.
At last 
At last 2 
At last 3
Joy then took the title of ‘At Last’ and once it was scanned I decided I wanted to add some digital brush strokes to work more into areas I felt needed it. In the spirit of experimentation I used the smudge tool and was amazed by what happened. I am so excited about the possibilities of this approach and got some of the best feedback I have had throughout the course. Randel has encouraged me to ‘make 100s of these’ which I certainly intend to do!
I definitely see collage and decollage being part of my future work and doing the course has given me a good sense of the direction I want to take. It has introduced me to artists I haven’t come across before and the video of collage artist Eunice Parsons remains one of my all time favourite artists’ documentaries.
I am very pleased I signed up to do the workshop and I am sure it will have a long-term influence on my work. It was hard to keep going sometimes and I definitely found some of the prompts harder than others. Some of the exercises like the 10-minute collage I will carry on doing, particularly helpful if I am feeling blocked or uncertain. I am grateful to Randel and the 52weekcollage group for the support, feedback and inspiration.