Reflections on my college artwork: collage

Part of the purpose of this blog is so I can have a place to post my latest artwork. But today, I thought it would be neat to show some of my old stuff from college. The first subject I want to share is collage.

Collage is a media near and dear to my heart. For those of you unfamiliar with the process, it involves creating art pieces from various materials; paper, cardboard, magazines, and any found object that can be attached to your desired surface. Despite how influential collage is to my art, I didn't really get into it till my junior year. Since there weren't any classes or instructors in the topic at my art school, I had to learn it on my own.

I realized early on that collage is a highly intuitive process. It still follows a lot of "art rules" like balance, form, negative space, and color harmony, but those rules manifest themselves in completely different ways from say, drawing, illustration, or traditional painting. It's more about the materials themselves and how they are arranged. Collage takes mundane, ignored objects and transforms them into something unexpected and beautiful. 

My senior art show featured three white shadow boxes and two panels, one blue and one green.

In retrospect, I can see that my early work is a lot less experienced. I filled most of the space with a patchwork of small, paper pieces, creating something that's pretty chaotic. While the artworks still have a lot of visual interest, they feel somewhat incoherent to me now. As I learned more about the media, I gained a better sense of how to create less overwhelming collages by using a variety of paper sizes. 

Looking at these early collage attempts, I'm reminded of the chance art school offers to think big. You have more freedom to try extravagant, inconvenient projects without having to worry as much about the consequences. Now, I have to consider storage space and what I'm going to do with my artwork after it's done. While I miss the opportunities to go crazy in the name of artistic exploration, being forced to take responsibility for the aftermath of my art projects has helped me evaluate which ideas are actually worth pursuing. 

Thanks for letting me share! There are a few more pieces from college I'm planning on share, so stay tuned for that. 

onward and upward,

Bethany