A couple of weeks ago I attended a collage workshop at Light Work in Syracuse, NY with artist Suné Woods. I had seen the event on Facebook and immediately signed up. One of my big goals this year was to re-focus on my own art practice and I saw this workshop as an opportunity to actually MAKE SOMETHING. The first half of the workshop was an artist talk with Suné in her exhibition and then a presentation where she shared with us artists that influenced her. This all lead up to us sitting around a table covered in magazines, glue, and scissors. I was in heaven! Seriously, what better way to spend a day?
As I stood by the edge of the table glancing over the stack of magazines I spotted a space-themed National Geographic and lunged for it! The three collages above are the pieces I made during the workshop. I worked fast. I tried not to “think too much.” I am super pleased with the results.
This exercise was exactly the kick in the butt I needed! I feel refreshed. I feel inspired.
After returning to Rochester after my blissful collage workshop experience I was invited to Visual Studies Workshop for – wait for it – a collage workshop with their Project Space artist Nancy Topolski. It’s like the universe was trying to tell me something. Above is the collage I made at VSW. This was a very different process. We only used black and white photocopies, and we had access to a photocopier so you could enlarge or shrink images as you wished. I made this in about 15mins. Again, like the collages I made in Suné’s workshop, I wanted to focus more on how I was reacting to what I was making and not on the thinking about what I should make.
Get ready folks! You’ll be seeing more collages from me soon.