No - I hadn't forgotten

... about all the found papers. Only got sidetracked by too many other things.

Remember? In May I optimistically announced that anybody who had any papers to send to me should do so URGENTLY as I wanted to finish the books before mid-July.

[Don't know what I'm talking about? Check this post here, or the Found Papers Project tag for a overview]

Well... nothing happened despite my optimism. Well, that's not true: I did get a number more envelopes in the mail. When I was in Berlin, I picked up a rather adorable collection, and for a weekend, everyone kept passing any sort of found paper on to me. Thank you, again!

So, I put them all on my floor last weekend, to kind of get me back amongst them to see what to do with them. I had a few ideas kicking about before I had left in June. But... hm... nothing happened. There were all these papers and I didn't have a clue! A couple of hunches at best but definitely not enough to run with them.

To get me at least slowly walking again, I've now uploaded the third book which is finished: well, cut apart, not strung together though. Compared with the two first ones, it's white and a bit sparse, but features some candle smoke, sand and some authentic dirt on the architect's plan.

I did a first trawl through what are somewhere in the region of 25 envelopes of different STUFF, and picked some bits and pieces from them. They are all kind of white too... maybe I'll stick with that non-colour for a bit...

Found Paper Project Book #3
Mixed media collage on board
45.5 x 9 cm, doublesided
[top row's the backside, bottom row the front]

Well, next weekend I can start walking faster, I reckon. Let's see where to.

Almost there with the Found Papers Project

The most recent envelope I received for the Found Papers project is stretching my imagination: a board and plenty of playcards from a children's boardgame which looks like a couple of decades old; the dried pink petals of some spring tree blossoms and plenty more to get excited about.

I am trying to finish the project before mid-July. In order to do that, I've been asking people to send me any more found papers by the end of May. This should give me enough time to finish a few more books: there are some ideas for printmaking, said flower petals and quite a few more bits and pieces that are here already.

Here's a peek into the envelope above. You see my excitement?



Not quite? How about now?

Doing collage and thinking collage

FPP#3 WIP , mixed media collage on board
45.5x9cm
[if you follow the link,
click at 'all sizes' above the photo to see a close-up]

I had just uploaded my most recent Found Papers book to Flickr earlier on when I stumbled across a recent post by one of the collage artists that I had discovered over the past few months. Neda at Papiers Colles does collage that stay with me quite some time after I leave her blog: they are often composed of female figures, difficult, intense and haunting. The compositions are striking and - working much more conceptually than I do - of a clarity that really gets to me.

One of her recent posts spelled something out that I had only in passing picked up: she explored - inquisitivly and carefully - the differences between collage and scrapbooking. In so doing, she put a name to something that had rummaged (if not loudly so but persistently) in my own mind since I've been exploring and seeking out collage artists.

It is the link to avantgarde (however awkward that term may be) that makes collage an art form that was fought over, experimented with and thus often outwith mainstream art. The one collage book I bought a while back has some intriguing collages in it which include fumage - the technique of using soot - of candles, lamps etc - to leave marks on paper. While I couldn't find anything online about the artist - Banerjee - I did find plenty on the technique. Always in the context of surrealism and experimental automatic techniques with which the meaning of art was pushed to its boundaries, transcended or just to have had fun with (taking the piss would be the Glasgow phrase for it).

• See, here, e.g., something on the techniques employed by the artist Ithell Colquhoun
• Or, here, the Wikipedia entry on surrealist techniques

And while I am getting rather conscious of me turning into an art snob at this point: I wonder if it's not the curiosity, inquisitiveness and love of experimentation that makes art? Well - I suppose much of that has to do also with creativity, doesn't it - have a look at Neda's post and the many comments on what matters to her readers.

For those precious found papers

... there are image transfers.


In one of my recent envelopes I received something too precious to cut up, glue on and paint over. It's a handwritten letter from my friend's gran. I think I'm getting very sentimental about things like that, in particular since I have only one grandparent left (who incidentally doesn't write letters but talks on the phone once in a while).

I did a big of digging around - remembering that much of mixed media and altered media works with transfers - image transfers with gel medium, alcohol or various other ways - not dissimilar to monotypes in printmaking.

So, I scanned in the letter, printed it on ordinary paper, treated the surface of the receiving paper with some acrylic gloss medium, positioned the print out onto it, used the back of a spoon to burnish the paper thoroughly before starting to peel off the print slowly.

There are various posts - some tell you to remove the print before it's totally dry, others want you to wait til it's dry - the paper separated quite neatly to leave the ink printing on the receiving paper. Some of the stuck on paper can be peeled off carefully once the medium has dried. But it requires some experimenting with best times, best effect etc. And once finished and dried should be sealed with some acrylic medium before proceeding further.

Transferred onto the prepared collage background.
Left the original plain paper, right the collage piece with
two layers, one in black and one in blue -
I'm pleased that the blue transferred quite strongly too,

I actually liked the effect of some transfer paper remaining stuck.

This plain paper transfer is a really simple technique - it produces a soft type of transfer but even for writing it seems to work to the extent that I was looking for.

Here are some useful posts and sites I've come across in the process,

• starting with the WetCanvas post on image transfers here
• the plain paper transfer is taken from this site here
• and Toni's A Spattering blog has a couple of further useful posts on transfer techniques here

Using the project for this kind of technique explorations is really good fun: it's plenty of reason enough to try out some of the more involved collage techniques as well as to push what particular media can or cannot do. - Otherwise it would be too much of an assembly line of artist books, anyway, wouldn't it.

Maybe you want to know, but I've now received twelve envelopes with various bits and pieces of recycling from Chicago, Ayrshire, Belfast, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Glasgow, Newcastle (Australia), Jerusalem, ... and I've been told there are more in the post from Jerusalem (again), Birmingham and Sunderland... very good. I probably need a bigger box for the envelopes soon.

Unpacking the Found Papers Book

... presented as post-hoc rationalisations, these thoughts here in fact came well before yesterday's post. Well - thoughts? Hm, not quite - some hand, brain, eye coordinations which led to some sustained exercises in general craftiness...

[some spillover from the day seems to be going on: writing conference papers is what I've been doing over the past few days, and it looks as if academic practice translates into blog posts, my apologies: this is distinctly wafty... as in fact the paper still is... but bear with me]

A book format such as the loosely, with a string, strung together palm leaf booklet [talked about here] seemed much better than merely a two-dimensional canvas for the found papers.

The string acquired some beads - paper beads, made out of some of the found papers too.
I came across paper beads first on etsy. They are so simple to make and can be customised into different shapes, but more importantly colour-coordinated sooo easily: just use the same found papers, coloured papers, and hey presto: there's your perfect accompaniment.

Paperbeads

An instruction for the beads is here. They are cut strips of paper, rolled tiedly together on a skewer or similar, then fixed with glue/ gloss medium to acquire some strength. And that's it.

The cover is some left over postcards, covered in more found papers - some of the yellow envelopes I got from Australia are perfect - there's some stamping, some addressing and general texture. Again, glued on with decoupage medium, covered with decoupage medium and thoroughly dried it's pretty sturdy and looks generally undestructable (though that's deceptive I suppose).

Inside cover with title

Title and signature go inside the cover. It's rather conventional, as far as collage titles go, but good nonetheless: This one is called Moin Olle: Sondervig. Slupsk - Taken from some text on the collage, and the two most outlying place names from the map on the back.

Half the postcard format is perfect for a good cover of the booklet.

This observation leads to the final, most important (?), point on the format... but that'll take a bit longer, so it'll have to wait til tomorrow...

Found papers update: Prototype

The actual book with cover

I've got a prototype for my found papers project. It took me a while and several iterations to come up with a format that I felt would work and would reflect the idea of found papers from different place and people - if you want to check back to the start of the project, read this first post, and check out the tag Found Paper project.

The whole collage: Top row is the back, bottom is the front,
each side measuring 39x9cm
[Click on the photo to see more detail...
Blogger wasn't playing ball with this one]

So, after roadtesting a variety of glues, sealings and varnishes, here is Found Papers Book #1.
I will say a bit more about format, cover and general craftiness involved in one of the next posts, but it's too late for that tonight.

Found Papers Project Book #1, Card 1
6.5x9cm

Thus, only briefly: a couple of snapshots, and a lazy link to some more in this Flickr set.

And inside: the palm leaf book form - though not terribly neatly laid out

I've been practising...

... collecting stuff.

Well - admittedly, with a day on the beach I've always found it easy to come home with all sorts of treasures. The beach day this week fell right into the middle of a series of intense low pressure zones moving across the West Coast. So, wild winds, sea and waves washed ashore plenty of findings.

While the pictures are uploading to Flickr, here's what I've found: Some smoothed down ceramics and tiles, a bit of rusty metal (I hope it's not from one of the submarines that are busily moving up and down this coast) and some pretty rocks.


There were bigger finds that resisted moving.


And of course: the winds, the sea and the waves...


PS: that was once the rain had stopped...

Alternative supports

I've been receiving a few more envelopes stuffed with found papers - more on the content of these in one of the next posts, and a big thank you to those who have been sending material along!

Since my little lunchtime conversation on 'what's to do', I've been thinking around these collages from allover. And... kind of got stuck with content. Shifted sideways (mentally at least), and started thinking about form - one of my stumbling blocks had been the two dimensional support: canvas, paper. It seemed far too unified, homogenous and definite for the idea of getting incidentals from different people in different locations.

One of the recent posts I really enjoyed was Lindsay's report from her bookmaking course, and the concertina artist book she made around the word 'reiteration'. I had been collecting ideas on customising and making sketchbooks for some time (thought they haven't progressed further than a draft state so far).

So, some concerted googling and asking around - thank you Lindsay! - unearthed a couple of simple bookmaking ideas. Unsurprisingly, many on crafty sites for projects with kids.

I had a go at some simple designs from Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord's site http://makingbooks.com

And ended up with these three ones here: A palm leaf book in the front, the hotdog booklet back right, and an accordion book back left.



This is them unfolded:



And, I must admit that my favourite is the palm leaf: as with the accordion design, it can be folded flat, but in addition, the order of leaves can be swapped around (provided the cord is long enough), and it can easily be taken apart and reassembled.



So: next step: size, actual support material and so on and so on...

One, two, three, GO!!!

The runner, Mixed media on paper, 40x50cm

Yesterday over lunch:

M: So, I saw the email you sent round about the art stuff. - I can't believe that you don't have a clue what you'll gonna do with those papers!!! Is that true, you don't know what you'll do with them? That's terrible!
G: Hm, yes - basically: I could do a whole range of things with them, but it'll need to rummage a little longer for it to become clearer what it may be.
M: That's so strange...

...

G: So, am I gonna get some papers from you? Why don't you just empty your pockets now?
M: Hey dude, I for sure can't do that [imagine good Canadian accent at this point ;)]. Well, it's not that I gonna give you any old paper. I need to get something for you that looks as if I have thought about it for a long time, something that is really clever and cool. You know, not just any old rubbish... So that you think I thought about it for a long time, without me having thought about it, you know what I mean?!

Yes... I do... and so he'll for sure will take a little longer til I get that really cool, ironic piece of found paper... LOL...

So, the race is on... at least for M., methinks... but it usually is...

Hoarding as hobby?

... I am not too sure about that one at all, and maybe that will be my ultimate downfall when it comes to collaging...

As much as I enjoy getting glimpses of other people's collections, I find it a bit difficult to remind myself to pick up things, keep things and think of them as possibly something else.

But I am trying... and these are some of my recent found papers: a little bag which brought me cardamon coffee from Jerusalem's old town, some scraps of leather when I customised my recent bag acquisition, a concert ticket, and some photo print outs from my recent art which had gone wrong (the print out, not the art) - and subsequent attempts at fixing my printer.

Found papers. Someone's #2

Here's another lot of found papers...

In fact, they were the first ones I received... They had been sitting on my kitchen counter for a while now. I keep taking them out of their envelope, look at them, arrange and rearrange, and arrange again.

I do like the eating options on the back of one museum ticket. And I do like the 'engineering wonder' of another.

I wonder though if I will beyond beyond this feeling that they all are just far too precious to use up? LOL - I'll wait and move them around for a little longer, I suppose.

In the meantime: if you have some found papers, you want to send me, see the original post here, and send me an email and I can send some further details.

I found something

today... while walking up the hill to work I came across this... walked back and picked it up.



How lucky is that?

A rusty old key. Just there on the pavement. While I was looking at that little spot of cobalt paint that splashed onto my trainers a few weeks back.

Found papers. A bit of art history

Merzmalerei was the term the German artist Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) gave to his assemblages and collages. Merzmalerei - a wonderfully lautmalerisches word. Apologies: I'm too lazy for the dictionary: it's one of those words that is 'painting with sounds' - is expressive just by the sounds it makes.
Merzpaintings - its origins seem to lie in one of Schwitter's early found papers - the cut off of a Com-merz-bank notice.

Schwitters lived in Hanover - the shopping destination from where I grew up. And the nickname Hangover gives an indication what me and my friends thought about the city back then. So, I probably will have seen some of his collages on school trips to the local museum. But I will remember to make time to go and visit the Sprengel museum again next time I have some time.

Schwitters was loosely associated with the Dadaist movement, but living in provincial Hanover provide plenty of insulation from it all the same.

One of the collages which inspired my found papers project is this one:

Kurt Schwitters, Aerated viii
1942, found and prepared papers and oil on canvas
49x39cm
The Art Institute of Chicago

I also came across this wonderfully eccentric account of how teachers in the 1970s would introduce students to Schwitters's art of finding papers:

'Kurt Schwitters was a primly dressed man in white shirt with starched collar and dark suit who would ride his bicycle through Hanover; now and then he would stop to pick up a tram ticket and many a different thrown away bits and pieces from the gutters; he would wander through the woods and collect sticks; who would tear up newspapers and decorate postcard portraits with spectacles and moustaches; who would take barbed wire, oil filters and shoe polish and would glue everything into his paintings'

• With this quote taken and translated from this website, go and have another look at the many Merzpaintings he made.
• there is also the Schwitters foundation, here
• and someone on Flickr collaged a hommage stamp to Schwitters. You want to see it? It's here
• finally, here's a general google image search on Kurt Schwitters

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Found papers. Someone's #1

My internet was off yesterday and I scared myself about just how put out I was by that... In any case. I've been getting a few promises for found papers - and it's interesting to see the kinds of associations people have offered up in response to my project call.

Here's a first lot of findings - a bit of bookkeeping, a bit of coach driving and some scribbles on papers...

I've made a box for collection, and ideas and thoughts are rummaging around in there and in my head as to where this may go.

Thank you, M.!

.

Getting going...

wonderful... so the first responses are back: and I'm looking forward to post from New Zealand, Chicago, Jerusalem, Belfast, Kreuzberg, Goettingen and Uelzen... How nice. I'm particularly pleased about the last one: there is effectively only one person I'm in touch with who lives where I grew up other than my parents - hi Toja! - and I haven't really been in touch much of late. So, this has already been good. Any body else?

This is going to be an interesting one - I think I'm not much of a collector - well, I do have plenty of things that remind me of people and places but it's not really paper stuff I collect. And I think I need to learn collecting scraps of paper and bits and pieces again... Similar to how painting teaches me to see and experience the around me differently, this collecting project will do something similar.


.

Found papers. From somewhere. Project

Detail, Water spray and a low sun,
mixed media collage on paper

Yesterday's mail brought a lovely surprise: Lindsay had sent me the first installment of found papers from her day-to-day. I had mentioned to her an idea for a project that had been rumbling around my mind for a wee while: doing collage as in glueing paper onto paper is even more fun if the paper glued onto each other is found, not bought - found papers are those stumbled upon, incidentally or even accidentally - and most of Picasso's and Braques's papiers colles and Schwitters's Merzmalerei assembled such found papers.

With many of my friends and colleagues scattered across Europe and further afield, I wondered if they would not send me some found papers from their day-to-day lives - Found papers. From Somewhere.

Found papers could be tickets, sweet wrappers, flyers, beer mats, posters, - whatever can be easily posted, isn't bought for its own sake, and could be glued onto something else...

Lindsay's mailing now prompted me to finally pull these ideas together, to make up a small flier and to send it to the people I know elsewhere.

Similarly, if you're reading this and would like to be part of it, just drop me an email - see address on the sidebar and I could send you some more details.

The plan is to collect found papers over the next few months and then develop them into a series of collages - I don't have a much clearer idea than that at the moment, but am sure it'll develop - most art projects do that.

Detail, Water spray and a low sun,

Mixed media collage on paper

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Collage techniques

Detail, Water spray and a low sun,
Mixed media collage, 40x30cm

... by Gerald Brommer (Watson-Guptill, 1994) is the title of my latest art book acquisition. I've been browsing through it and have been enjoying it very much so far.

The book features the works of many different (North-American) collage artists and starts off with an exploration into attitudes, materials, and techniques.

Rather than doing a proper book review - too close to my day job - here are a few of the eye-opening sentences from the introduction of the book. So, let me quote extensively (;))

Artists explore abstract, representational, semiabstract and nonobjective imagery through a variety of collage techniques. In some ways, collage lends itself best to dynamic and vibrant treatments of abstract and nonobjective imagery. Yet, as soon as I say those words, a transparency of a representational image jars my senses with its sheer beauty and simplicity. Collage is a layering of thoughs and ideas as well as of paper, fabric, glue, and paint. As they work, collagists amass history and emotion along with their gathered collage materials, and viewers add yet another layer of meaning. (p. 9)

Brommer continues further along this line of layering, adding history and presence:

The very gathering of materials is a historical process, and collages might even be considered biographies of the lives of the artists-or even as historical artefacts themselves. Collage artists often speak of providing a second life for found papers and objects... (ibid)

And so he writes on, and I am finding resonances with some of my previous thoughts and practice; e.g. in the way that findings enter works (see an earlier post on this here), but also how imagery are captured, mediated and transformed into something different, (as in this post on work flow).

Detail, Water spray and a low sun,
Mixed media collage, 40x30cm

The very idea of working with discarded, recycled, and found materials is working away in the background of my mind as a way of asking all my friends in far away places to send me some of their found papers and materials to be brought together in something new... oh, there seems to be another project for the future.

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Findings

One apple on a bare tree
Originally uploaded by gesah

.... are the results of academic endeavour. I've always liked the vagueness of the English term - in German it is much more often the Results section that concludes and brings to an end what has been undertaken.

Findings, by contrast, can be the incidentals and unexpected treasures one stumbles upon. So, as no surprise, going into the woods near my parents' place and looking for mushroom is great - any time of the year, really. The fun of it lies in the never knowing whether there'll be some mushrooms ... findings as sought after, yet not given.

One of the first things my friend said on Friday when we set out for a long sunny afternoon walk was: Maybe we'll find something!
So, apples were picked, sloes were eaten and plenty of pictures taken. No mushrooms but hey, it's about findings when foraging.

Admittedly, the art in this is a bit vague...

...unsurprisingly given the findings headings: Found objects in collages and mixed media are an immediate link to the 'having stumbled upon' of my fondness of mushrooms.

But as for work process there is another link: a piece of art as a finding rather than a result - findings as it's the process of making art rather than the intentional outcome. And all the same while planning, preparing and intending to do something (which I in general do a lot, really), it may be something else that becomes significant about that particular piece.