Don't Think Too Hard--From the Archives

From April 2000, another collage from an old bundle uncovered while packing. I did quite a number of these, mostly cut from the Ottawa Citizen or the National Post. I usually made them when I couldn't sleep. I got a big kick out of linking random sentences. When we were kids, my siblings and I would turn the sound down on the TV and turn up the sound on an unrelated radio program and laugh hysterically at the incongruity. We made our own fun.

Super Cake!

This is another collage from 1998. The background is a recipe for raisin bran muffin's that was on the inside of a cereal box. I was participating in a weekly art project with poet Karen Massey and artist Katie Argyle and the topic of the week was "cake". Special appearance by David Kronenburg.

Future Cloudy

From a series of undated collages using "found" text, probably 1998? Judging from the optimistic tone, I'd guess I made this one during a bout of insomnia.

From the Archives: 1992

Whilst cleaning out the shed, I came across these slides. No kidding. They were in a bin in the shed.

This was taken at the old sculpture studio at U of Ottawa. I was doing these large abstact paintings at the time and had constructed a screen of found debris to hang in front. The hanging piece was meant to echo the shapes in the painting and it, in turn was painted with black and white.

The viewer was invited to walk in the space between the painting and the hanging.

This may have been inspired by seeing footage of Jackson Pollock painting on clear glass, the viewpoint being from the other side of the glass.

From the Archives: 11 April 2000

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Headlines newspaper collage on Cheerios box

For this collage, I cut out a bunch of words of interest and then made headlines out of them. My personal favorite is Bad Sellers plot to kill consumers.

From the Archives: 11 April 2000

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Cross Words newspaper collage on cereal box

I used crossword puzzle clues for this collage. It is a sort of sound poem, meant to be read like a comic, although there are no lines separating the frames.

From the Archives: 15 April 2000

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Confused? newspaper collage on cereal box

Solace to the confused, paranoid, defeated and depressed: you are likely to live longer!

From the Archives: 17 April, 2000

Romance newspaper collage on cereal box

I was really enjoying taking bits of existing text and trying to make a story out them. The perameters I had set for myself during this project were that all text and images were to come from the same newspaper. I got a real kick out of pairing abstract concepts with computers, science and machinery.

From the Archives: 13 April 2000

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Fashion newspaper collage on Life cereal box

Another daily newspaper collage from 2000.

From the Archives: 14 April 2000

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I was recently going through my basement and came across a bundle of collages that were all stuck together. I haven't had the heart to try to pick them apart yet to see if they can be saved, so until the right rainy day comes along they will stay that way.

So, I decided that I would start scanning some of the things I did before digital technology came into my life.

This was from a series of collages I did from the daily newspaper on cereal boxes. Each day I would go through the paper and cut out anything of interest, both text and images and then try to make a narrative out of the stack. It is meant to be read like a comic panel.

This particular collage was from an article about Charlton Heston's speech in British Columbia in 2000. The text is all directly from his speech--you just can't make this stuff up folks!

I meant to post this when Mr. Heston died last year, but couldn't put my hands on it at the time.