Markmaking influences / part 2

More about the impetus behind the pieces in my “Gesture and Flow” exhibition (May/June 2023)...

You may've read in the previous post about how, during the pandemic, I used drawing to alter potential collage imagery. In the spring of 2022 I participated in a Poetry and Collage residency. While learning about asemic writing, I began exploring all kinds of mark-making.

My husband and I were fortunate to be able to spend significant time on the Oregon Coast that year. I used my beach walks to gather potential mark-making tools: stems of dune grasses, sticks, driftwood, shell fragments, etc. Connecting to nature was an impetus in attempting to use these "finds" as tools. I worked on paper so that the pieces would be easy to move back and forth to the studio in Denver.

Natural tools: driftwood, sticks, and grasses — before they were darkened with ink

My favorite markmaking tools were the spiral structures from broken shells. They hold a pretty good quantity of ink and make lovely, blob-ular strokes that fade off into feathery wisps. There's a lot of chance and variation involved in how the ink flows and I enjoy working with that dynamic. Found papers, found words, found tools just seem to go together.

Marks made with the interior spiral structure of a found broken seashell.

During the residency, I used a page of asemic writing, made with the end of a stick as my pen, to support a few words of almost-hidden text. All the found words are tucked in to the right side so that they’re barely noticeable. It takes some study to discover the message. It reads: 

shadow 
evening wraps me, steady
How slowly dark
comes
down
be still

“Shadow,” asemic writing created with driftwood tool and ink with added collage poetry, 14 x 11”, 2022.

Over the last year, I've made marks on stacks of 14 x 11" watercolor papers. Some of the resulting designs were intriguing enough that I decided to add collage elements to emphasize the curving shapes, extend the lines, and punctuate the movement. It was a joy to discover paper elements that contained imagery (lines and curves) that matched up with the linework or otherwise enhanced the composition. Responding to the marks (and learning when to stop) was an engaging and time-consuming process. I worked on several at a time so that when I got “stuck”, I could work on another. Somehow the appropriate imagery would eventually be found and I could then return to add the needed element(s). And the back and forth cycle of developing the final works would continue.

“Pivot,” collage and ink on watercolor paper, 14 x 11”, 2023.

“Buoyancy,” collage and ink on watercolor paper, 14 x 11”, 2023.

The resulting collages make up the bulk of the work in the Gesture and Flow exhibition. They are very different from anything I've created in the past. I'm learning a lot by talking about the collages with people who visit the show. I’m getting feedback about their being quite joyous and especially captivating upon close inspection. I loved hearing a couple of people reference Calder’s work while looking at them, a correlation that hadn’t occurred to me, although I’ve always resonated with his works. (And have a Calder-esque mobile over my desk!)

Hanging the work on the gallery walls allows me to gain further perspective by studying the pieces as a related group — I think this work will form the basis for an ongoing series of collages.

Gallery installation of Gesture and Flow exhibition, 2023. Each collage is framed, 20 x 16”, and was made in 2022-23.

This concept may work best on an intimate scale, but I'd also like to try working on larger versions. Perhaps by working with bigger brushes or tools and responding with appropriately-sized collage elements. Another option is to continue to work with the current tools by scanning and enlarging the marks, printing them out, and then adding larger collage elements. Not sure where all this is going but I'm enjoying the process!

Poetry and Collage

Not many people know that I’ve always loved poetry. It’s just not something that comes up in everyday conversation. (Although perhaps it should!) I’ve recently been exploring how words might possibly mingle with my collage-making… so I participated, along with 11 other artists and poets, in the Kolaj Institute’s inaugural Poetry and Collage Residency (March 2022).

Several selections from work I created during the residency are included in a newly launched journal, PoetryXCollage.

Pictured is “Island,” which combines imagery, the line-ending words of an existing poem, and a few added found words (9x8”collage on 14x11” watercolor paper, 2022).

The Kolaj Institute wrote of the residency and resulting journal…

“Kolaj has been circling around the intersection of poetry and collage throughout its history and yet it wasn’t really until Rod T. Boyer’s article in Kolaj 32, “Mind the Gap: Collision and Context in Haiku and Collage, that we began to appreciate the degree to which these two mediums interacted with each other. In that article Boyer compares the disjunction that occurs in haiku with a similar phenomenon in collage. A light went off and we decided to organize a series of residencies with the goal of exploring the intersection of collage and poetry.

In January 2022, we issued a call to artists for a Poetry & Collage Residency and received so many excellent responses that we organized a series of three residencies. The artists heard from guest speakers Kevin Sampsell, Renée Reizman, Rod T. Boyer, and the Poetry Foundation’s Fred Sasaki and were challenged to create page spreads to be included in a forthcoming book of collage and poetry.

In the residency, we challenged artists to move beyond taxonomical debates. Ric Kasini Kadour said, “What is a poem? We do not need to have a singular answer to that question. Individually we must each answer that question for ourselves. In practice, every poem we make will be an example of what a poem is. In considering other people’s work, we should ask ourselves, How is this a poem?”

During the residencies, artists interrogated each other’s artwork, collaborated, and shared ideas. And at the end of it, they sent us more page spreads than could fit into a single book. Impressed and moved by the volume and quality of cultural output and a deep belief that this practice–however you want to describe it–at the intersection of collage and poetry deserves a platform, we decided to create a new journal dedicated to it. Christopher Kurts named it PoetryXCollage and said, “How do you pronounce it? You can say the letter ‘X’ or it can stand for the words ‘and,’ ‘in collaboration with,’ or ‘featuring.’ The X is an intersection, a crossroads, or an equation. X marks the spot.”

Each issue of PoetryXCollage is a printed journal of artwork and writing and presents six movements of work by artists and curators. Page spreads are free zones of thinking where the contributor has chosen all elements of the layout: font, image place, composition, etc.

Published by Kolaj and Kasini House, PoetryXCollage Volume Two includes my work along with that of half of the artists in the residency: Anthony D. Kelly, Castle Bar, County Mayo, Ireland; Carla E. Reyes, Astoria, New York, USA; Samantha Brown, Blackrock, County Louth, Ireland; and Laura Tafe, Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA. The publication is available for purchase here. In 2023, Kolaj Institute will open submissions for future volumes of PoetryXCollage.