7 Square Meters To Paint With Paper
I’d like to introduce you to a small space where creativity is not forced, but instead flows naturally from lived experiences and inner self. A space where I give myself the freedom to experiment with color, texture, and form. A space where I can challenge the status quo. A space where I can escape from all the online and offline noise. A space where I can eliminate thought, breathe, and find my center.
Sourcing
It would be too difficult to talk about the work being done in this space without also talking about the work being done outside of this space, as both are equal. Collecting, creating, and sourcing the right material is a crucial part of the artistic process in collage that is too often overlooked.
I’ve been inspired over time by photographers such as Daido Moriyama, who didn’t consider their work as art, but as copies of an existing reality. Embracing this concept made me produce my own copies, and spend half of my time away from the studio to capture a grotesque amount of photographs of Cork and its surroundings.
While I go on these long photo walks, I’ve also gathered discarded movie posters, urban posters, and parts of billboard ads that are added to the stack of materials I’ll need to organize later. Back at the studio we add to all of this the packages sent to me by private collectors and artists across the world of anything they perceive to be of value to my work. It can take entire days to go through these packages to find and categorize the materials that can be of use. But before opening them, they are usually put in storage, which we’ll get to later on in this post.
Preparation
After gathering these materials and creating these “copies of reality”, collage becomes a natural and open invitation to take it all a step further down the road, and to start writing a new chapter by transforming, piecing together, and giving new meaning to these gathered but fragmented pieces of reality.
Backing up, organizing, and editing photographs, or creating a digital collage to print and use as a base for an analog work… Creating graphics, scanning found material, printing… The list is endless and only limited to one’s imagination when you’re at this desk and at this stage, completely blurring the lines between curator and creator.
I’ve allowed myself the use of digital tools in this stage of the process, while some purists do not, stating it makes it harder for them to “enter the zone”, which is understandable. While limiting one’s self to “analog-only” can also be a fruitful compromise, the slicing for me usually comes after the printing, and the printing usually comes after digital editing.
Execution
We don’t create from scratch, in the traditional sense, it’s actually the exact opposite. We begin with an overwhelming infinity of the world around us- Images, texts, graphics and found objects. The very act of creating a collage is an act of contraction, where the artist must limit this infinite source by making choices. We select, cut, tear, remove, and add, effectively withdrawing a portion of the world to create a new, finite space for the artwork.
To make these choices, I've personally decided to use creative intuition over reasoned thought, allowing me to move quickly. The fact that the space is relatively small has also favored swiftness, where anything needed at any point time is within arm’s reach. And once the glue starts being spread on paper, time and space are pretty much replaced with the conversation taking place between the canvas and I. Paper talks, and you can always decide to talk back.
Storage
The last wall (separated in two to make way for an entrance) of the space is dedicated to storage. Because yes, we collagists are hoarders. A place for the tools, a place for the unopened packages, and a place for finished artworks of smaller size.
This compromise in space also means that I cannot make more than 40 collage artworks on canvas, but I can create and store hundreds made on paper. Even so, every year, a certain amount of original works made on paper are destroyed to leave room for more. If I desire to create more on canvas, I would have to create on top of an already existing collage made on canvas, making some artworks much thicker and layered than others.
Talking about destroying and collaging on top of previous artworks, we should also talk about the importance in this case of digitization and digital storage. None of my artworks are truly gone forever, because every one I ever made has either been scanned or professionally photographed, sits on a hard drive, and can be brought back into the world at its original size with print. Yeah, it’s a print, but still better than nothing.
And so we’ve come full circle, and we can start the machinery again by going to the sourcing shelves. Regardless, I felt it was important to document this space of creation with some personal thoughts because I have found great meaning in the act of creating collages, which I also see as an act of repair, transformation, and rebirth. I also believe collage, with its 400 years of history, should be considered just as equal to painting or sculpture. For too long has it been ignored and considered as folklore, when it actually fully embodies the paradoxical nature of creativity itself.
