Dabbling in Paper Collage

Partly as way to engage my brain in a new way I've tried my hand at collage. As a writer, I'm interested in how story can emerge from the interaction of elements, but I also wanted to look at the way a visual elements would interplay without worrying about a coherent story.

I started by visiting a local antique shop and gathering a bunch of old photographs.

I looked for photos that would be easy to isolate from the background and showed people in happy moments. The images cost just a few dollars each and are pure ephemera. They do not show the lives of anybody famous or historically significant. They are small moments of life captured and discarded or lost.

I went to second-hand bookstores for old National Geographics and old art prints, like this book, below, "Chaco Body" by Kirk Gittings and V.B. Price. I wanted images that spoke to my home in the southwest and also spoke of by-gone eras.

The final image, below, includes elements from a found-postcard, National Geographic, ads from a magazine, cut outs of Verna and Pueblo Bonita.

I try and do a collage every other day, and this one, using Jack as the feature, was more a study in restraint. It's interesting to learn a new visual language that sometimes asks for excess, and other times, restraint.