works.
about.
My bedroom walls were my canvas growing up. I covered them with appealing and inspiring visuals, from Maxim cover girls to professional soccer players. The first collage I remember making featured the cleats of my idols on a sheet of looseleaf. While sports were a focal point as an energetic youth, I never forgot the joy I experienced in my room, content with a pile of magazines and a pair of scissors.
Today, collecting unique and interesting material has become an obsession, something that I'm constantly on the look out for. Be it NatGeos from estate sales, “junk” mail delivered to my door, or recycle bin relics found in the early morning hours of trash day as I walk Annapolis cobblestone streets with my Australian Shepherd Gus.
As the scrap piles mount, I group similar images together. My goal is to make collages with a loose theme, that incorporate some ground rules on process and technique. Then pure chaos ensues. My various gathered materials are cut, ripped, shredded, turned over, organized, lost, and found again... miraculously under the sofa months later!
My own trivial set of “rules” are broken, but never completely abandoned. As much as I may like to have control over the ever evolving process and the end result, I do not. That is something to be celebrated! I let go of initial intentions, and embrace a universal energy that compels me to honor the spirit of the tree. If asked, surely it wouldn’t have agreed to become an advertisement for duck boots or a quadruple whopper.
I have often joked that I'm drowning in material, and can only stay afloat by creating something new. Now I see that I'm pleasantly doing the backstroke down a gentle stream, mind and scissors open to the beauty of it all. Always rewarded, reworking rubbish, and reveling in its revival.