Forget me not

"Oops, I did it again", someone who hit me one more time once said. Recently, I made a collage for one of Words in Bloom's poems. And, much like the late-nineties/early-aughts pop starlet already alluded to, I am never one to shy away from redundancy or repetition. I did, in fact, do it again.

I promise I won't write about it every time. Unless I have something insightful to say about it, of course.  Or...unless I change my mind, which I reserve the right to do at any given time, for any given reason, or any sudden gust of wind. We artistic types are a fickle breed, what can I say.

I try to do as much of my art by hand as I can. To keep as much of my process as analog as possible. Paper doesn't crash, Chris Ashworth says. I can personally attest that this is, indeed, true. Never once have I ever been forced to reboot glue-sticks, ink, or magazines. But this piece forced me to work in a more hybrid way.

I'm not a luddite or an elitist. I'm not opposed to technology. I don't believe that art must be physical or tangible in order to be creative or meaningful.

My earliest collages are digital. Working that way provided me with a frictionless point of entry. My ultimate complaint about the digital environment is that it's too open, too limitless. It gives me too many options, too many chances and too many undo's. I work better within confines and constriction. When my sense of control is fleeting. In the tenuous balance between serendipity and catastrophe.

My intention was for this piece to be analog as usual. I made the basic structure of the collage with torn magazine paper and painted vellum.

I arranged the type in Procreate.

Printed and distressed it.

And then set to work on adding the type to the collage. Under normal circumstances, I'd go about this one of two ways: tape transfer - pulling up the ink of the printed letters with clear tape and then adding it to the collage. Or, cutting out the letters and gluing them on. Neither was working. Neither were giving me the aesthetic I wanted. I was so frustrated I forget to take pictures of these failed attempts. But, believe me, you're not missing anything. If anything you should be grateful. Some things you can't un-see.

"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing," Theodore Roosevelt says, "the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing." I'd love to tell you that I'm someone who has their shit together. Who is a pillar of resilience and persistence. A real-go-getter. A person of indomitable will and determination. But you're not family. This isn't Thanksgiving dinner. And I don't have to lie to you about how my life is going. So let's be honest. The only reason I have that Roosevelt quote saved, is because I read it in book called "Unfuck Yourself". Grain of salt , as they say.

None of the right things were getting the job done, and doing nothing was sounding like better all the time. But maybe doing the 'wrong thing', the thing I didn't want to do, the thing that felt like cheating, that felt too easy, the thing that veered away from my original plan, was worth a try.

I scanned my distressed type. Brought it into procreate. Tweaked it a little. And, put it where I wanted it to go.

The nice thing about doing something digital is that you at least get a time lapse video.

Despite what many of have been told or lead to believe, there's a value to making things harder on yourself. To making things more difficult than they need to be. To taking the long way around. To doing things the slow way. The constraints can help you see things differently. They can help you get to the kind of work you wouldn't discover any other way. But, ultimately, it's about being a utilitarian when it comes to artistry. Use whatever is available to you. Whatever resources you have at the ready. The tools are secondary. All that matters is the work and that you do it, not what you used to get it done. I believe in the ends more than the means…

P.s. It still bothered me a little that the first piece was partially digital. So, I made sure I made another that was all analog. Like I said...fickle.

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