January 28, 2024

collecting, collaging

Welcome to the Sunday post.

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The favorite things I've ever written are usually things I read later and don't remember having written. This is maybe true of other things I've made, including these collages. I received a thick book with handmade paper, a book that reminded me of my grandmother's bible. The cover is black, also handmade. It's nearly three inches thick. The book has never felt like something to write in, so long ago, I started making collages for its pages.

I have no memory of sitting with these images and rubber cementing or gluing them into the book. What I remember more is the collecting of the images. My spiral book of folders containing images I've cut or torn out of various magazines, in the last ten years mostly art magazines, but in the last twenty, a variety, including architecture, pop culture, and other random magazines.

Out of all the collages in the book so far--it's not even half-full--there is really only one, a centerfold collage, that I can connect to a specific memory, a collage that would describe an experience.

These two here, with their vibrant colors, make me think I might know when they were created, but it's only a guess. It was a conflicted time, a time where I mostly adhered to surfaces because going deeper might've plunged me back into the grief I was staving off, or so I imagined.

Mostly I remember an evening with people I no longer speak to, gathered around a table cutting images from the various magazines on the table. Whether these collages were made from the images collected that night, or they were made that night, I don't know. I usually carry images for years before doing something with them. They collect in their multicolored pockets awaiting use, sometimes grouped by hue or theme.

In February 2020 I invited two artists I admire to my house for dinner. We made a future date to have an 'art night' where we would gather around my table again for art-making, where I would likely gather my magazines and cut out pieces of color or images or start creating a new collage. The art night never happened--it was scheduled for late March 2020.

To fill up the pages of my notebooks. To fill up the pages of the book of collages. These are my arrows.

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