“A million ideas, without a million ways to accomplish them.”
-Initially, when i first heard the project title and brief, I had a whole bunch of ideas in my head. it was a sense of both excitement and loss. Excited that I had so many methods and ideas I wanted to try, but also at a complete loss at how to start doing them.
However, these process became clearer as the days passed, and the ideas slowly materialized after research and trials began.
Artist Numbah 1: Mark Bradford
He is known for using collages from pretty much anything he can find. making grid patterns and then progresses to use sand paper to reveal the layers and colours i between the pages stuck in the collage.
In this instance, I chose to focus on the collage aspect of his work. This was further experimented on in two routes:
1- Crumpling paper mono print collage.
2- Magazine Sandpaper face collage.
1-
I drew inspiration from his collages and combined it with my new knowledge of mono print to form unique textures as seen from the bottom of my journal shown below. I crumpled random pieces of paper in various sizes and put them in a collage on an ink slab and put it under the press. After which I took out the pieces of paper and unfolded them to reveal the unique patterns caused by the random folds and overlapping of each of the pieces in the collage.
The resulting pattern was unique and confusing to say the least, I proceeded to make a couple more to ensure i had enough to fill my lines as the weeks passed. and i slowly came to realize these patterns give off the feel of :
“anxious…”
My Bradford research page in my journal.
2-
Still working along the line of collages, I turned to magazines much like Bradford did.in his. I then realized that magazines had many faces within them. It struck me that a collage of different faces and expressions would portray a very strong feeling. At this point i was still unsure of what feeling a collage of faces would portray.
After piecing the face together in the collage, I realized the collage gave off a feel of an obsessive person, constantly finding that perfect face, or feature. It was at this point where i remembered that Bradford frequently used sandpaper to sand down magazines to reveal the layers underneath. So i proceeded to sand down the eyes of all the faces, to further exaggerate the obsessive feeling that I felt from the initial collage, making it more obvious, making it more….
“psychotic.”
Progress shot of the cutting and collaging of the faces.
final outcome of the magazine face collage.