"One principle of collage is, you have to kill one thing to make another. It's a small-scale model of revolutionary behavior." Lucy Sante, collage artist, author, and critic.
It is the "killing" of one thing, tearing or cutting an image, that is sometimes the difficult part of collage for me; especially if it is a piece of ephemera I have had for years or that belonged to someone no longer here. Then there is getting just the right piece glued down where it has to be - not tearing too much or leaving too much. And, what do you cover up with another scrap here, with a circle there, with a cut out "ransom-note word" here or another there. Behind it all: what am I trying to say, if anything.
Anyway, I have been working on 24 small collages for a few days while also making post cards for swapping. While rummaging for papers, I found some that I made almost twenty years ago. They are slick magazine pages that were treated with Citra-Sol causing the inks to run. After the wet pages were pressed together, interesting patterns emerged when the pages were pulled apart. I will use some of these in the collages I am working on.
