Hazy Collage

I made a new collage! It's untitled, but the inspiration began with the hazy background squares in the upper left. In a way, the work is also a response to a CD that I've been loving, by the artist M83. I just got the CD for my birthday (thanks, Cassandra!) and I love the autumnal-looking nostalgic photography. The new album is called, appropriately, Saturdays=Youth. This collage reminds me of the cooler, hazier parts of summer, and coincidentally, also of my childhood. As a kid, I would play outside in the woods, finding interesting plants and twigs and making houses under the branches of low trees. We have a creek at home and to this day I find old pieces of bottles and mugs half-buried in the creek bed and I save them. Perhaps that's why the cut-out of the ceramic sieve found its way in there. Or perhaps I just needed something white to balance out that hot pink thing.

Some collages that I make for myself never turn out as good as the things I make for other people. But with this work I was determined to just enjoy whatever became of it. I tried to use both torn papers and cut papers together, in geometric shapes and abstract shapes. I noticed that in previous collages I've really stuck with geometry- squares on squares, straight lines, et cetera. Who doesn't love a good grid? But I think I can do more interesting things when I add strategically-placed blobs, or layers of photographs, and underlying layers. There's also some windshield glass and actual pebbles from Boston Harbor thrown (glued?) in there for good measure.