Click image to enlarge:
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Notes on this collage:
- I made this one on a block of wood. It’s 7.5 x 5.5 inches. I like the natural feel that the wood creates and it makes a great background that gives the collage pieces a disembodied feel.
- The man in the collage is Charley Chase, from a 1979 book called The Great Movie Comedians (by Leonard Maltin). Chase is a largely forgotten Hollywood figure who made several movies in the 1920s and 30s. The kid’s weapon seems to be shooting out an array of colored dots (aka the contents of my hole puncher).
- Glue stick works just fine on wood, by the way.
- I made a “Safe For Work” version of this collage as well, with the word PUNISHED instead of Technological Motherfucker. Sometimes when making these collages with words, I’ll scan a few different versions. It’s like having different subtitles.
- Papirmass and Brown Paper Bag are doing a collage scrap exchange art contest. You have through this Friday to join in the fun.
- The Paper Trumpets spotlight this week is on Hope Kroll, an artist whose collage work is dense with images, many of which are very small and detailed, and some of them are even raised off the paper to create a 3-dimensional effect. “In the beginning I worked flat,” she says. “But over time I began to incorporate the 3D effects I had been using in my wood dioramas. I tried all sorts of materials to lift images off the page before finally settling on foam core. I like working in three dimensions because it allows me to put so much more imagery into a single collage.”
Kroll has been collaging for fourteen years now and her work has gotten more and more complex. Her newer work is often so flooded with carefully cut images, that I wonder if she goes a little crazy working on her collages. “What would potentially drive you and other people crazy keeps me sane. I often need to quiet my mind and cutting helps. I need to keep my hands busy and I find when I have not actively cut in a while I start to feel anxious and even depressed… The idea (behind the overflowing accumulation of images) is that I want to go all out and create mind-blowingly complex collages.” See Kroll’s new piece, “Homage to Nabokov,” below:
