Collage is the noble conquest of the irrational, the coupling of two realities, irreconcilable in appearance, upon a plane, which apparently does not suit them.
-Max Ernst
I have been creating daily collages for a little under a year now, attempting to fill up 3 moleskin sketchbooks with 365 collages. I’ve found National Geographic’s have the best images to work with, however, Vogue, science books and encyclopedias, Life, and any junk mail catalogs can also be gold mines. Occasionally I include some of my own printed and painted works, and would like to try to incorporate that more. I prefer the vintage look and feel of the National Geographic’s, but really anything that is made of paper can and will be used for a collage.
Coming in to my final semester with silkscreen being my only studio class I knew I wanted to really utilize the time I had in the studio and make something I felt I could continue after school and could be apart of a larger project. Being that it was my second time taking the class, I was able to choose what I wanted my projects to be and how I want to use my time. I decided on creating some sort of series and eventually turned to the collages I had already made. Along with silkscreen this project also includes letterpress and will be combined into a panel book.
After choosing three of my favorite collages, I set to figuring out how to separate the images into multiple layers to print. In theory this is kind of ironic, separating the collaged material. I decided on creating the full image using CMYK separations. This meant each picture would only be four layers, yet a multitude of other shades and colors would be created in the overlap. My initial plan was to pixelate the layers into half tones, creating a speckled image that would be better read from afar. After a test run with an image of a hamburger I decided changing the threshold of the images would create a more solid image and still allowed me to keep most of the information in the images.
I find the process and outcome of letterpress to be one of the most fulfilling of the print processes. The crisp look of the letters, the embossment into the page, the freedom of color, everything about it is aesthetically pleasing to me, and while a rigorous and time consuming process, the outcome is incredibly worth it. I wanted the words that accompany the images to seemingly have nothing to do with each other, yet after close inspection one finds a connection that can be made. I’ve written two of the passages and am waiting on a third from my very talented writer friend Gio Alonzi. Setting the type for about a 13-sentence short story takes about three to four hours, each letter, space and punctuation an individual piece of letter type. Once it is set I use “furniture”, or specifically sized pieces of wood, to lock the text block into the press. Printing the text onto the paper is the least time consuming aspect of the process and is honestly just really fun. I get this sense of timelessness doing it, like I’m transported to the 30’s and am printing the latest headlines on the old Vandercook press. That is honestly one of the things I love the most about many of the print making processes. This connection to the past and art history by doing something that at times is so archaic and industrial in nature.
When I proposed the idea of including letterpress in my project to my teacher I initially thought, letterpress=book, I have to create a bound form to house my images and words. She suggested that I just have the two live on a single piece of paper like more of a broadside than a book. This sounded easier so of course I decided to do that instead. However, after seeing the first of the finished products I really just wanted to see it in book form as well. I decided on the panel book lay out, making it a book but also just a structural form that could stand on its own, and show all of the panels if desired. This also allowed me to have a large space on the other side on which I plan to use the trial runs of the prints and collage them into a decorative backside to the panels. The idea of printed collaged images, then collaging screen prints into another new image is exciting and I think will turn out really cool. I included images of the screens I use, some of my letterpress text block, the ‘dummy’ for the panel book and the in progress final print for the book and initial series.
I’ve really enjoyed working on this project and while I still have a lot to do, think it will turn out quite nice at the end of the semester, which is quickly approaching! While the letterpress aspect of this project may be a bit harder to accomplish, silkscreen is something I can do at home, and will continue to do after school. I will post the finished product once it’s complete.
