Alexandra Sheldon

How do we put collages together?

Alexandra Sheldon1 Comment

This semester we made a lot of interesting papers....now to put them together. There is always the NO PLAN plan. I call this the WILDCARD. I sometimes work like this. I have no plan, I just grab something that catches my eye. It is usually a piece of painted paper and it is usually something that I feel a magnetic draw to. I throw it down and see what might look good next to it. Sometimes I go thru my piles of papers and see what I feel impelled to reach for. I will sit on the floor of my studio and go thru stacks of stuff. I find that if you can find one little thing that feels good and magical, then you can look thru your stacks and other things will surface to join that initial piece.

At other times, I need a system, a theme, a series to continue on. For me, it is often related to walking outdoors and to landscape. I like a grid to fit shapes into. I will spend days painting papers the colors I have seen on the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard and then spend days fitting these colors into abstract grids. I like to find a way to work that I can sometimes rest in. I change all the time. I might start my day working on a series of very tight gridlike collages and then feel like doing the NO PLAN pieces. I think creative people rebel against authority. So you may think you have finally found your system, your theme but then another part of you gets sick of that and turns around and does the opposite. We are complicated creatures. What I find especially delicious is what happens if I work a whole day in the studio: I get freer as the day goes on. My brain has completely given up trying to control what’s going on and my body is finally free to let loose. Philip Guston said that when he went into the studio he would ruminate on his life and think about everyone and then they would all leave and he would leave and then he would paint. I totally get that: there is an emptying out of self that can happen. I experience it if I put in a lot of studio time. I sometimes think that what I love about being an artist is this shedding of ego and mind that you can achieve while spending hours making stuff. I get the same thing from gardening, yoga, hot baths, long walks and being with animals ( to name a few). 

So how are you going to put collages together? 

Look at artists and observe their systems and themes. 

Jim Dine and Jasper Johns consistently use symbols (flags, numbers, hearts, targets,etc) in their paintings. 
Louise Nevelson used the grid to organise her blocks and balusters of wood.
Helen Frankenthaler did not use a grid at all but rather she poured paint and experimented with “being in tune with your feelings” as she so perfectly put it. Her system of working was more with an intuitive listening, to herself and to the materials. 

Matisse said that for him, color and light = emotion. That simple. ( And by the way, Matisse influenced a generation of artists like Lois Dodd and Louisa Matthiasdottir who aspire to this direct kind of painting - very unintellectual, where the painting is delicious and direct). It is interesting to note that Matisse also said that everything in front of him flattened like wallpaper. He would paint the woman and the doorway and the vase of flowers all in the same breathy and exuberant way. So what was his system? Painting from life, his own interpretation of it. Even in his late paper cut outs the shapes usually refer to something from his life like water, flowers, a woman’s body, etc. 

Looking at artists like Fred Otnes, Gerhard Richter and Mark Bradford you find a richness in atmosphere, light and pattern. Paintings and collages may not necessarily have a focal point but instead there is a sweep or rhythm. This kind of work relies on a mood, a feeling, an atmosphere. Color and light can reign supreme as it does in Mark Rothko. The paintings are meant to be experienced as physical emotions. He wanted people to stand in front of the canvases and to practically fall into the mood and feeling of them.

Gelli Plate Printing!

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Commercial Gelli plates can be bought at art stores. They run @$29 for 8”x10”. I like making them. I had to fail a couple of times but here is the recipe that seems to work well:

Vegetable Glycerin (available at Whole Foods. I bought online, one gallon for @30.00$)
Isopropyl Alcohol 91% (@3.00 for 16 oz)
Water
Knox Gelatine Packets (@$12.00 for a box of 12 packets)

Use a double boiler  (I just put a stainless steel bowl over a pot of hot water).
Put 1.5 cups of water in double boiler
Add 1.5 cups of alcohol. 
Put heat on medium and sprinkle 18 packets of gelatine into mixture before it is heated. Stir slowly with a whisk. You will be taking care with mixing the mixture because you don’t want to mix tons of air bubbles into it. Do not dump gelatine in one big pile because it will lump up and be hard to melt. Sprinkle it in as you mix with the whisk. Mixture will begin to melt as it gets warmer. Add 1.5 cups of vegetable glycerin.
Mix slowly for about ten minutes until translucent and dissolved. Unsuccessful gelli plates can be melted down again by the way but do not do this if there is any paint on them.

Next: Pour mixture into your mould. This recipe makes one 8”x10” gelli plate. But you could do two smaller ones. The gelli plates need several hours to set up. I left them to set overnight. Take a table knife gently around the edge of one side and gently nudge the gelli away from the mould. Then hold upright and allow the gelli to slowly peel away from the entire mould. Always store a gelli plate on a plastic surface as they will absorb any surface they are on like newspaper or regular paper. These store well and will last a long time. I allow paint to build up on them. Each time I print the old dried paints come off when it is reworked making interesting surfaces.

Choosing your moulds: I went to Michaels and bought a few plastic frames for photographs, these are about $5 each). You could use a glass baking pan or even a metal baking sheet. Just remember that it isn’t great to have grooved edges or rounded ones. I wanted a simple sharp corner. 

My first batch was too soft and the gelli broke into pieces but it turns out that they were really cool to print off of. So now I think I’d like to make a whole tray of gelli and cut it into interesting shapes for printing.

We used Open Golden Acrylics for printing because they stay wet longer than regular acrylics. However, any acrylics can be printed with. There are about a hundred different ways to print with these soft gelatine plates. This week we played with printing over magazine pictures. We also cut shapes to use as stencils and used plastic stencils. 

What’s cool about this method? The prints are soft and rather beautiful, reflecting the soft skin-like material. Printing with acrylics makes great materials for collaging later.
Colours can be printed over painted papers making luscious built up surfaces of different hues and intensities. Or shapes can be explored. Negatives, positives and the interaction of the two. Find graphic simple advertisements and print the rectangle shape of the gelli plate over them for an interesting graphic effect. Print on rice papers, sewing patterns or deli papers for a great transparent collage material.