LAW 177: Great Minds, or Synchronicity

 Talk about collage weirdness; minutes after i post images of "Is This Not My Pre-Approved Life?" yesterday one of my contacts from a variety of collage boards commented on my piece. 

That isn't the weird part, the weird part was that she was just finishing a piece in which she had used two of the same images i had. 

The story unfolds something like this.

Untitled, by Diana Curbelo

Diana posted with my permission the two pieces side by side on a FB board that she created. She was interested, as explained below in exploring the emotional ground behind our mutual choices. Below you will find some of the commentary.

....help me elaborate on this synchronization of collagists’s emotional choices on images (?)

PLEASE NOTE THE POSITIONS OF THE PIECES HAVE BEEN REVERSED, DIANE IS L, MINE, R

Two minutes after Gail posted her collage (on the left) in another group, (I had just glued down mine, on the right), I saw it and gasped and wrote in her comments:

“Gail, I have 3 of the images you have used, two of which I actually used today for my Sunday Diary Collage, which I will post shortly!! So uncanny!!! It has to be the emotions we are feeling. What do you think????”

I was flabbergasted!! Lol

I was curious, excited to see what she had done, what images we had used, and how the completed work differed.

Diana went on to say....

I’ve had this happen before, but never at the exact same time. I think how we choose our images is so directly related to how we are feeling, and this weekend, well, those women are looking a bit worried....

I pointed out that there also structural similarities. We had both used an amputated human figure, and the compositional structure was very similar.

Like i said, great minds....

Stay tuned

and if you haven't voted yet, make sure that you do.

more later gail

LAW 176: Construction of a collage

 I was talking with Don today about the construction of this piece. How it came together, how i used the elements to create the composition.

From one of my ongoing collage journals, Eye to Eye,  6.5 x 10" spiral bound hardcover with black cardstock. 

IS THIS NOT MY BEAUTIFUL LIFE

I enjoy working ideas out in my collage journals. I try to not get too invested in them as finished projects, rather more like a handy way to develop new vocubulary.

Not to mention, working in as limited space as i do, it is far simpler to be able to close a notebook, than finding safe, dry storage for larger individual pieces.

Unlike my normal practice of coming to the collage table without preconceptions of what i was going to create, in this case i knew what i wanted to make. Triggered by the outside of a very official looking envelope, which was nothing more than yet another come on for life insurance. I saw that pre-approved bar code, and instantly decided i had to use it.

I just might have either been listening to or had the lyrics of the Talking Heads, "Once in a Lifetime" going through my head. Although i didn't know exactly what image i was going to use, i did know that i wanted a sort of as above, as below sort of thing going on.

This collage turned into a technical challenge when i had to make the decision to use one side of a page instead of the other. 

As an aside, at the very beginning of my collage "career" i decided to not copy nor print images. This was for two basic reasons, i did not want to let the images get too precious; and i felt that copying and printing multiples of images lessened what i saw as a primary thrust of collage, the spontaneity of random juxtaposition in composition.

Of course this means that i am often put into the position of sacrificing one image to use the other. Such a dilemma.

Another technical challenge here: how to use an element that is only half of a recognizable image, in particular the image of the woman's legs. Blessed serendipity came into play when i realized that i could indeed eat my cake and have it too. That the image that i decided to sacrifice was intact enough that i could use it as well.

Structurally i felt that the two background pieces of numbers and computer imagery weren't strong enough, or didn't provide enought contrast to convey my intention. Amazingly the reverse of the off cut from between her legs turned out to fit perfectly in that problematic negative space.

Tying the whole piece together is the photo of a group of young women from circa 1930's Germany. So, two different media sources using the metaphor of swimming in advertising to sell us something other than what we have.

Keep on making

more later,

gail