As is my custom, sometime in the month of February I turn my studio over to playing with collage. It starts with sharing the space and resources with a group of friends, and we spend a day playing together. For the past several years, we’ve handed around a group collage over the course of the day. Here’s what we came up with this year. The background is a discarded sketch by my friend Henry Thomas’ father George, who passed away last year. I was fortunate to be gifted a generous supply of his leftover art materials, and a few of his paintings and sketches. I’m not sure what he would have thought of this, but we certainly loved working with it as our ground surface!
As usual, I didn’t actually finish much on the day of the party, but here are the two little pieces that I actually got set up and glued down.
This year’s collage episode draws to a close – I’m all done but the cleanup.
Here are the last three of this year’s edition
and with that, I proceed to the cleanup phase, saving what might be inspiring or useful for next time, sorting the magazines and papers into topical thematic piles, and figuring out how to get it all back out of the way so I can get back to working on that cat tree!
I had short studio time, so only got one little collage glued down
So maybe this is a good day to present the Group Collage from this year:
Each year that we’ve collaged together in my studio, we send a collage around and people add to it from whatever they’re working with. It takes on a life of its own, and becomes a memento of that year’s collage gathering.
My collages come in batches because I work on bunches at the same time. I leaf through magazines and calendars, and tear out things that go together. It always ends up being many piles, which then get arranged on paper and eventually glued down.
The core of this year’s collages was an article on vintage ladies’ dresses in an Antiques magazine. So the collages ended up being a bit of a staged fashion shoot.
I think there will be at least one more batch to show before this round is over. As always, I get great amusement and satisfaction from playing with magazine images, making improbable juxtapositions that please my eye. Such a good way to play!
I got to host my annual February collage party in person in my studio for the first time since Covid. It was a small gathering, just 4 of us, but a really lovely day.
I’ll post a photo of the group collage tomorrow. This is the only piece I more or less finished today but I’m pretty pleased with it. And mostly pleased to have had a solid chunk of art time with dear ones.
For the second year, because of covid caution I did not host the usual all-day gathering in my studio. Instead, a group of us gathered on zoom to share our collage or other art work. Many lovely and fruitful reflections on art, life, and spirit. I’m grateful to have such family and friends.
If you’ve been following Ayespider for a while, you know that sometime in February I make collages. Well, that time has arrived, even though once again this year (covid caution!) I’m not able to have my in-studio all day collage-making gathering with friends. Here’s the first one, make of it what you will.
Below, my worktable, during the evening. Probably a preview of the next two collage posts.
Some of my Inner Critics are right over there, where I can ignore their commentary.
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