15/03/2018 - BETH COLLAB SESSION 1

When we got together to start planning our collaboration, I brought along all of my tissue paper so that we could get experimenting with as much potential as possible. I discussed with her a bit about why I thought our works would go well together, and then also showed some examples of tissue paper works and thought about different ways we might approach things. I had in part been inspired by the compass construction drawings I had seen as a small child, which would teach you to sketch a realistic, well proportioned animal through step by step construction of circles and linework.
I remember books of these in my childhood as some of the earliest guidance on how to accurately construct forms from nature, and really improved my technical awareness of how to create lifelike depictions of animals even from an early age. I thought these would be a good way to bridge the aesthetic gap between Beth's work and my own, and emphasise the geometric elements of nature in an evocative way.





As a start I suggested she try working with the tissue paper in entirely her own style, as this would give Beth the best idea of the materials capabilities and ability to integrate with her practice. In the meantime I would try using simple imagery of an animal broken down into geometric shapes to see how well a more complex figurative yet stylised concept would work in tissue paper. As this was more of a material experiment than an actual outcome, I found a simple yet iconic image of an owl on google to work from.

Immediately the tissue paper began to reveal useful qualities when Beth produced a small concept sketch on tracing paper for one of her larger works. Because of it's transluscent finish, the tissue allowed her to directly trace the shapes from her sketch onto the paper, allowing for easy and accurate reconstruction.

As we worked, she talked about how she used only numbers from the fibonacci sequence when constructing her pieces, and wrote them down so that I could also use them in my owl. Instantly this changed the entire way I worked, as I was no longer freely sketching based on what looked appealing, and instead I had to be much more methodical about my creation to integrate these numbers within the piece. Using a strict rule such as a formula to inform practice was also something I had never considered. Before now it would have struct me as restrictive, however when applied in an experimental, easygoing format such as this it actually worked really well to guide me through the process and structure my working.

Beth really liked the way some of the colours overlaid when using tissue paper, however we both agreed that certain colours mixed more effectively than others. The beauty of this however is that it was a lot easier to build further layers of colour until the desired effect is achieved.

Once our pieces had come together, we prepared a small area of our studio wall with a darkened colour to simulate an outdoor surface. I also made Beth aware that pasting the designs could change the colour quite substantially as not only could the colours integrate between the layers more thoroughly when the spaces between them were filled with paste, but also with the wall behind it. As you can see in this picture to the left, the white areas of the owl are quite bright, however when stuck they would definitely appear much darker with the wall surface bonded directly against it.

It was at this point when using this collage method suddenly struck a eureka moment, even at this early stage. Whilst we were both trialing our designs up against these darker surfaces before properly pasting them down, I also off-handedly tried combining both pieces, easily shifting the two pieces of seperate material over one another in a variety of ways. However as soon as the two works were aligned, they both suddenly stepped out as a conjoined piece in their own right. Because both works were created to the same measurements, and in the same geometric style, from the same material, they blended seamlessly and appeared almost made for one another, although we had no previous intention of combining them until now.

This was a perfect example of the usefulness of these methods of controlled composition, as we would have probably never thought to combine the two works in such a way otherwise. Immediately my mind jumped ahead (perhaps a little ambitiously) to a room filled with tissue paper animals and geometric abstractions which could be assembled at will into any number of colourful works.

This piece also got me thinking about the other multitude of things which could be represented by shapes, for example as soon as the figurative element of the owl was added, the yellow circle at the top immediately took on the tone of a sun. I wondered what else could be suggested with careful placement of certain geometric elements.

As we were both so excited with how well combining the two pieces had worked, we both agreed to combine them together into a single piece. We stuck her piece first, and saw immediately how the colours changed. Especially in the areas where colour was overlaid. Only time would tell how drying out would cause the colours to change further still.

Being able to experiment with this process so thoroughly, and also do so in the sheltered environment on studio walls, really helped me be more thorough in my practical experiments with the tissue paper.

Finally we combined the two designs into a single final piece. It was now that the work really came alive. Adding the figurative element to the geometric abstractions brought a protagonist to the artwork and focussed the piece onto a subject. Although I think the geometric shapes would be beautiful buy themselves on a wall, it is the addition of a character which brings the artwork in line with styles of graffiti and street art, where a central narrative or character takes the foreground. Pasting the two designs together also enhanced the integration of the two pieces, allowing areas of red to be seen through the single layer of white behind the wings, whereas other areas, such as the suggestion of a sun in the yellow circle at the top, faded away and became less obvious. This promoted new connections between the two pieces, the red shape behind the owl appearing more as a house-like shape for example, and the squares at the bottom, like the flame on a candle, the light catching along the tail feathers as if the owl were swooping from a window in a faraway barn, towards the onlooker, looking out into the dark with a candle.

I was really impressed with our outcome, and though it had been a very successful initial collaboration. Our two techniques and styles had come together in a way which helped us both learn new skills and think in new ways, and I think we had produced a work which was original and quite groundbreaking in it's method, particularly with our intention to then take this work to a street setting.
I have never seen an artist working with collage on the streets, apart from one artist Nemos who uses the biodegrable properties of paper to let his works degrade and change over time. This is something I have explored in a previous project on my Foundation Diploma but could be an interesting avenue for me to revisit if my work starts to take on a more collage based focus.