Contemporary Collage Week 1 :Introduction and Cut and Paste

My head is still spinning with excitement from first session of ' Contemporary Collage and mixed media' at City Lit '  We spent the morning going through the packed programme for the next 10 weeks , illustrated with examples from a large variety of contemporary collage artists ( more in another post) then after a brief break  an overview of about 20  techniques . Phew!  Then the afternoon was spent diving into boxes of materials  , trying some of these out , allowing work to make itself.

As I don't usually buy magazines ( apart from the one that comes with the Saturday Guardian ) I spent most of my time with  copies of Vogue and World of Interiors  ( which I kidnapped and brought home ) seduced by the glossy paper and photography. I  started first  in my comfort zone, painting papers then cutting up strips of 'furnishing fabrics' and pasting them randomly including using the backs of the strips. 

I  then found a rather strange article  about 'Nana' making knitted  ensembles for 'Sasha' dolls  in the arts section (?!) with illustrations of  their 'on the beach 'outfits .  I started out simply with a couple of hats , cutting out circles, then tried some 'frottage' , rubbing pastels and graphite  on tracing paper  laid over the raised surface of the collage. 

 Having cut out various articles of knitted clothing, I got intrigued by the negative shapes  left behind ( reminders of cutting out paper dolls)  and produced this rather sinister looking collage 

Turning to ' Vogue' I cut out  some more  of the figures and used the remaining shapes to frame the central  photo of a  model. This has potential I think . 

The afternoon  ended too soon , I wish I'd taken a photo of the mess on the table and on the floor but was too busy snipping and glueing. We had a quick review of everyone's work  which was extremely diverse , I feel like I'm only scratching the surface of the possibilities 

At home in the studio, I'm looking at every bit of paper in a new light. When I opened the copy of Vogue ( which had already been cut into by previous students) I was intrigued by  juxtaposition of the  shapes on the page beneath with the overlying image. So I ripped out both pages and played around with  shifting the underlying layer and took photos ( combined below)  

 Playing with papers is addictive -  besides having several collages at different stages, we were encouraged to start a 'scrap book'  of all the bits we didn't use ( which in my case are all the figures I cut out as I  wanted the surroundings) . 

Our homework was to bring in an existing book for 'desecration' next week. I'm off to the secondhand bookshops in Faversham to see what I can find.