photograph

Seeing possibilities... collecting collage ingredients

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Whatisee1

I'm often asked where the bits and pieces of my collages come from... I have a habit of looking at the negative spaces, the spaces BETWEEN and AROUND the featured items in a photograph. It's often there that I see the patterns, color gradations, and subtle imagery that I find most intriguing and useable.

Whatisee2

The large photo above shows a recent photograph from the newspaper that had ingredient potential. (Caveat: It's very dangerous not to finish the paper before I get to it, if you want to be assured of reading the complete story!)

At left is a detail of the photo where I've indicated, with green outlines, the areas that I will rip out for future use.

I was recently explaining how I gather materials during a demonstration to a local art guild. Afterwards one fellow said, "You sure see things differently..." Yep, and I took that statement as a huge compliment!

Family treasures

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Bernsongrandparents Just got back from a long 4-day road trip to pick up some family artwork created by my late uncle, Maurice Bernson -- work from a lot of genres, done over many years' time, that had been collected by another uncle, Claude Bernson. A veritable treasure trove of inspiration.

I'll write more about the whole adventure soon, a family history tour of sorts, covering over 1800 miles.

One highlight was a visit to the River Valley Pioneer Museum in Canadian, Texas where we found out about old family photographs that were discovered among the glass negatives of Julius Born. The collection was recently digitized and is available for viewing on The Portal to Texas History. My grandparents' amazing wedding photo, circa 1916ish, (shown here) was among them. Click to enlarge and see detail.