Who Are We? Seeking Answers to the Big Questions--from the archives

Another collage from my archives (read: under the basement stairs). I can't pinpoint the exact date of this one, but it seems the coupon for TastiTaters on the back expired in July of 1998. Another 40 cents down the drain.

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.

Moving Countdown

I recently found out I have a few months to move, so I have begun to excavate the layers that I have built around me. This includes digging through boxes from my previous move. I discovered a bundle of old collages from 2000 and before; some damaged, some unfinished, none documented. I'll be posting some of these in the days to come, starting with these two that were stuck together and are now pretty much illegible. I think it gives them a strange fragile beauty. I might work on them some more, or maybe frame them. I like how they have transferred information onto one other, encrypted each other. Or maybe I should throw them away. Right now they are spread out on the floor with my cat sitting on top of them. I'm not much of an archivist.

Globe and Mail: 90 Days of Collage, Day 5--Rain date!

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Chance of Showers

You know, I've been really psyched for this project. Alas, today the Globe and Mail did not arrive on my doorstep. I phoned the circulation number and the kindly robotic gentleman informed me that my subscription account would be credited one day, so 90 days of collage will continue, rain, snow, sleet or hail. It just may not be 90 consecutive days.

So to deal with my nervous energy and to fulfill my self-imposed task of one collage a day, I give you Chance of showers, another cereal-box collage which I completed today. It reflects the state of limbo one enters when putting too much faith in the weatherman.

Two consecutive days of elephant collages, you may well ask? Pure coincidence.

Illustration Friday: Entangled

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collage and paint on cereal box

Undeniably fashionable, his hair-do was, nonetheless, ill-suited to his job

as Press-Operator

While this is, perhaps, not the best representation of this weeks IF topic: entangled, the potential for entanglement is implicit.

Illustration Friday: Unbalanced

"Houses On My Street"

cereal box collage

These are all buildings in my neighbourhood. People move here because it has a "quaint", small-town feel. They buy quaint, small houses then knock them down and build ridiculously large houses . Unbalanced.

I'll be donating this piece to the annual fundraising auction at Saw Gallery, called Sketch, Friday, November 27, 8pm until 2am.

Illustration Friday: Skinny

This is a mini-collage, pasted on the back of a hockey card. I had some of those plastic membership card laminating sleeves lying around and thought it would be fun to make a wallet-sized collage. So here it is, Actual Size! I also used some wood-grained Mac-Tac that I've had around forever. My friend Katie, whose birthday it is, used to make the most fantastic and hilarious postage stamp collages with her brother many years ago. This is my hommage. Happy Birthday Katie!

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.

Illustration Friday: Rambunctious

Rambunctious collage and paint on cereal box

Another cereal box collage. I used images from some old encyclopedias, my old Cub Book, and incorporated a cancelled cheque written by my grandfather in 1974 which I recently came across in an old copy of The Journals of Kierkegaard.

Illustration Friday-Similar

The Common Nail collage and paint on cereal box

There are almost as many types of nails as there materials to nail them into. Be very careful in your selection of the proper nail as an incorrect choice may cause weak joints, instability and loss of sleep.

101 Frames at Gallery 101, Sat. Dec. 6

Here is my piece for the Gallery 101 fundraising auction 101 Frames. The gallery provides the empty frame and it is up to the artist to fill it. The topic for this year is LUST. I chose to use the wholesome Quaker from the Life cereal box, who has popped up in previous collages. The words that are partially obscured by the chain, read goodness inside. I got to use the security chain from my old apartment and behind the crack in the door there is a mirror, so it looks like there is light and movement behind the door.
The auction takes place this Saturday night at 301 1/2 Bank st. (upstairs) and proceeds go to this non-profit, artist-run centre in downtown Ottawa.

SKETCH at SAW gallery: Friday Nov 28, 8 pm to 1 am

collage and paint on a no-name waffle box

I submitted this collage for the SKETCH fundraiser at SAW Gallery . This is not the finished version, which I forgot to scan--I changed the text and altered the position of the text bubbles.

The event was Friday night. I worked late, but attended with friend and fellow contributing artist Katie . There was a good crowd to purchase work donated by over 100 local artists. Artists were asked to donate un framed sketches, collages, roughs and the like to be sold for prices starting at $10. with all proceeds going to SAW for future programming.