Artful Compost Revisited

Just Sayin'
Jo Reimer
7.5 x 7.5
mixed media collage with painted papers

I keep a small basket of 7.5" substrates, mostly 140# and 300# weight, to use for collage. A full sheet of watercolor paper tears down to this size with no waste. When I travel I can grab a few sheets and toss them into a box of "compost" along with scissors, a tearing ruler, and glue so I have something to play with when the mood strikes.

I've talked before about my compost and if you click the link above you'll see some pictures of some of my compost piles. My blog header is a photo of a pile of compost in my studio. I'm not talking about making rich dirt. My compost consists of paper, piles of paper which I've painted and dyed and printed in various ways. I call it compost because as I search my piles and boxes of paper it all becomes a jumble of color that often suggests new, rich uses.

I don't use much ephemera or other commercially printed paper in my collage practice, preferring to paint original papers so that the artwork I create is completely my own. The painted papers add a complexity that I can't get from commercially printed papers. Most images in my work are my own photos or drawings. I don't see anything wrong with appropriated images when they're transformed in some way by the artist using them; it's just not my way of working.

Have you started your own compost pile? It's satisfying... like Just Sayin'.



Numbers and Strips, a collage series

by Jo Reimer

NUMBERS, a series
Collage
5" x 5" x 1.25"

As summer winds down I realize that it's time to return to blogging. Taking nearly three months off was good for me but since I enjoy writing and have actually made some art I figure it's time for some show and tell.

Working with the idea of strips, bands, stripes, slices led me to experimenting on a smaller scale, working on 5" x 5" cradled canvases. I discovered some things that might interest the collage artists among you.

Canvas isn't the best surface for collage. Save canvas for paint. Because it's a rough surface, even gessoed, the papers don't adhere well unless I really slather on the gel medium. Thin acrylic medium doesn't work at all. The solution was to glue thin paper, sort of an underpainting, to the canvas, working it into the fibers of the canvas. Then I could glue my strips of paper to the new surface using just about any permanent glue. It would be better to use a wood panel or gessobord, stiff paper, or simply a block of birch as a substrate.

As I worked with small strips of paper, applying glue to each little strip, and then carefully placing it, messing up my manicure and frustrating me with the time it took, I thought of a better way. 

• Using my old Xyron 850 adhesive laminating machine with it's 8" wide double sided adhesive I fed sheets of my collage papers through the machine. The results gave me paper with a peel-and-stick backing. Now I can cut the strips however wide I need them to be, peel off the protective backing and stick them in place. Easy-peasy.
• Another kind of adhesive backing is a product called Gudy-O, available through Talas, but the Gudy-O isn't as easy to manage as the Xyron, though it's still available. This particular Xyron machine is no longer made but a similar product is the Xyron 900.
• Perhpas some of the iron-on interfacings intended for fabric could be used for collage.  If you try the fusible interfacing let me know how it works with paper. If I try it I'll report my findings.

Ever A Good Thing
Collage
5" x 5" x 1.25"

 

Available Work