amanda briggs at dear ada

good morning

This is a small collage I did a while ago. I found the photo of the woman and her dog in a local antique shop. I love that "in the morning" was written at the bottom of it.

more collage to love.

Ohhh. A new collage artist to add to the list. Billy Zindel.
Wonderful, crisp, graphic. Happy me.

Via that's hot

collaged wallpaper

I'm catching up on some of my stacks of magazines and in the process, stumbled on the wonderful work of Catherine Hammerton in the August issue of icon magazine. Ms. Hammerton is a recent graduate from the Royal Academy of Art and specializes in handmade, one off wallpaper designs. She uses screen printing and hand finished detailing to ensure that every piece is unique. Apparently, she is also developing a collection of "ready to wear" papers to compliment the "current bespoke service". Collage meets interior design. Sign me up for more of that! There's a nice interview with the designer on moco loco if you want to learn more about her.

something I made on my summer vacation.

I'm nearing the end of my extended summer vacation and as I look back, I'm pretty happy with my time off. Lot's of making of things, small adventures, time to relax and most importantly for me, to think without deadline or expectation. It is pretty rare to have concentrated time to step out of the day to day of a busy life and job, to be able to reflect and ponder and imagine. And it's been fun to see what has bubbled up as the days and weeks have passed. Something this luxury of time has allowed me to noodle, is the recurring (and obscure) question as to whether there is a difference between making vs. doing. I've come to no steadfast conclusions about this, so there is no doctoral dissertation in the offing at this point. I do know that soon I'll be back at work and inevitably people will ask, "did you go anywhere on your vacation?" I don't know if it's the people I know or the times we live in, but it always feels to me, that "going somewhere" (eg. doing), is what people think of first when they think of fun or vacation. What I imagined before my time off, and what I now know for a fact after it, is that for me, fun is making stuff vs. doing (as in going on a long trip for example). Traveling is ok, but it's certainly not the first thing that comes to mind when I'm making my personal fun list.

Which brings me to the questions that have kept rattling through my head these past few weeks. Are there people who are more makers and others, doers, like some people are extroverts, others introverts? Is it a personality thing? Do some people feel more happy and whole if they are having big adventures, collecting experiences, traveling, in motion? Are others more themselves if they are closer to home, making stuff, building something from nothing, creating objects? And then again, maybe, it isn't really about travel as much as it is about motion. Stillness to make, motion to experience. But no, that's not right either because making stuff is an adventure and experience and doing things like travel can be creative and produce things. For some people motion and adventure are the source of their making. For others, stillness is the impetus for doing.

Obviously, I haven't really figured it out. And probably, I'm all wet anyway. Maybe, all this is just a product of having lot's of delicious time on my hands, which has allowed my mind to meander and float...taking me nicely to a...deadend. Maybe, there really isn't any difference between making and doing. Maybe, the truth is that we all just do both things at different times in our day and life.

Who knows. Regardless of the real answer, it's sure been fun to wonder.

in progress.

This is a detail of a collage I've been working on. It's "sweeter" than I'd expected which I'm not sure about. I suspect it's because of the butterflies.

i love collage.

My love for collage just got a couple of great resource fixes. The first, a collage a day, is an absolutely fabulous site featuring the really great artwork of Randall Plowman. One 4" x 4" collage, every day, for sale for $25. You can't beat that: great art, affordable prices, all while witnessing the dedication, discipline and hard work it takes to do art, day in and day out. This tasty find is thanks to my friend Russell.

The second great collage resource is the blog, collagemania. Where a collage a day is focused on the work of one person, collagemania is an overview of the work of tons of collage artists from all over the world. Some of my favorites from the site are the work of doblevay, on the banks of bay creek and paperheart to name just a few. I've just started to navigate this rich and deep site, so trust me, there are plenty more than these that will soon be favorites too.

Both sites are worthy of a visit. Two more good reasons that there's certainly no excuse for boredom!

love egg press.

There was a fantastic sample sale at egg press today. Lot's of cool single cards and boxed sets of their fabulous designs. I bought too many cards I'll probably never send but who cares? The designs are great and the people at egg press are great too. There was tons of stuff you want plus they were also screenprinting your choice of 4 designs onto any tee shirt you brought with you, adding to the shopping fun. But regardless of all that cool stuff, I think my favorite find of the day was this amazing bag of bits of scrap from their press. Such good collage fodder!

storied notebooks.

How fabulous are these? Thanks for the link to upper case gallery, paper and books from poppy. Great stuff, these electo sketchbooks and notebooks. Each one is an original assemblage of pages from found books and discarded papers with blank pages interspersed throughout for sketches and notes. These ones are unfortunately all sold out, but hopefully there will be more soon.

intuition pictured

I'm a big, big fan of collage as an art form. I love the energy that occurs when disparate things come together to create a whole new thing. There is an sense of randomness and magical clash in collage that sometimes is true and sometimes not. Great collage like any art form, can be the result of very deliberate thought and selection. I think Joseph Cornell's assemblages feel that way, so stunningly beautiful and considered in their organization, structure and story.

Collage can also be the result of some kind of "scientific" exercise the, like picking up all the stuff found on the way to work everyday and then cataloguing it. The artist Candy Jernigan subscribes to this school of thought, her book Evidence a testament to "objects lost and found". With self imposed restraints, the world is observed differently. And the collection of what you notice is the evidence of seeing through a particular filter. I love that.

I like collage as a thinking process too. I've used it as an art form, but I've also used it as a way to work through ideas and feelings. Its a great way to see the intuitive outside of ones own head. And it's a great tool to get others to do the same, if you're working with people or focus groups or teams. Pictures and stuff circumvent the intellect and the story becomes visual and visceral. Which is very immediate and pure. I love what is revealed in the process.

Well there's a new book out called Inspired by Dorte Nielsen and Kiki Hartmann which chronicals the collage process in a bit of a different way, by highlighting peoples creative journals and sketchbooks and notepads. Oh my god I love this book. They show a lot of different ways people approach the creative process and collaging in notebooks or on walls or on the desk, is universally a source of surprising ideas. The random clash inspires. The gathering of things that catch the attention and then the process of putting them in an order that "makes sense", is the core of inspiration to the designers and artists the authors meet. That's what I love best about collage. It's like letting the truth of the parts dictate what they should be together. So cool. So cool!

I heart Fred Tomaselli's work

Fred Tomaselli's work makes me very happy. I love the meticulous, obsessive quality of his pieces resulting in such a rich complexity. And then there is the inevitable discovery of the fact that he uses cut outs of birds and flowers to create his own particular, overarching narrative. The results are fantastic, psychedelic and so "of our time" in their mind altered trippiness. And too somehow, they also remind me of the detailed tapestries from medieval times. I'm less enamored with his depictions of human figures; it's the abstract, other-worldly ones that make my heart sing. To see more of his work check it out at the James Cohan website. So cool!