Geography

Years ago back in Mme Lanier’s art class, we had to do collage. I searched through the magazines provided for this purpose and carefully selected four images that caught my eye but that had nothing to do with one another whatsoever. Even at the age of eight I remember looking at my shellacked block of wood, images permanently affixed, my head tilted and my face scowling. It was amazing to me how four images that I found individually so beautiful could look so wrong together.

A few weeks ago, spurred on by my current obsession with Joseph Cornell, encaustic collage and assemblages, I started a class in collage at the local community college. My one goal for that first night was to create something better than my disaster from Mme Lanier’s class. Seriously, that was my only goal. I think I managed to at least accomplish that.

This time I decided to try to stick to the more muted colors that I tend to favor, browns and neutrals with only a splash of color here and there. I hunted down maps and flower images and used paper cranes because I use them in everything. But my favorite touch in this piece is easily overlooked. I had doodled on a fast-food restaurant napkin–filling in the dots on the napkin in a heart-shaped pattern and then adding flower drawings of my own. It’s in the lower right corner of the photo. Once the napkin had been glued down, the paper of the napkin virtually disappeared, leaving only my ballpoint pen markings. I’ll definitely have to play around with that technique more in the future.