Buried Treasure- Getting Serious About Collage

Today is Buried Treasure Day, when Seth, at The Altered Page asked friends to post their own personal favorite blog posting. My favorite isn't a post on my own blog but rather it's an article I wrote 9 years ago for an online 'zine called The Muse with a short intro by the editor. Here it is:

Getting Serious About CollageBy Jo ReimerMay 2000

Following is an artistically inspirational article written by Jo Reimer. It is accompanied by several of her previously unpublished collages both here and in the gallery. When I asked Jo about them she said that they were "practice" collages and she was very off-hand about them. Perhaps greatness doesn't always recognize itself.

Question: I've been working on my very first collage and I have questions about where to go from here. What does one mount to paper? How do I get that soft hazy look? How can I make the elements look like they belong together, like there's a connection?

Answer: Just keep working. Work some more. Work some more. Work at it every day, if you can, and if you can't do that at least make time to approach your art work 2 or 3 times a week. Consider nothing as precious. Few pieces of paper are precious. Adhesives and paint can be replaced; there's more where that came from, so use it, whatever it is. When you look at something you've done and are scared to take the next step, take it anyway.

I've just started drawing and my teacher told me to feel good about every bad drawing I make because I'm that much closer to drawing the way I'm intended to draw. He said we each have thousands of bad drawings in us blocking the way for the good work to get out, so it's really important to do lots of ugly work and get it out of my system. I believe that. I've done some hideous work, but once in a while something good squeaks its way to the surface to surprise me and encourage me that this is the right road to travel.

Some of the questions that beginners ask has to do with composition which we learn by doing and by studying what others have done. Good collages usually are made up of elements which relate to each other in some way. They may be related in color, theme, imagery. They may be formally composed, i.e. done strictly with attention to design elements of line, form, shape, and so on,or they may be narrative, (tell a story).

Have you taken a Basic Design course? Enroll in Basic Design at a university or at an art center and tell the instructor that your primary interest is collage. A collage workshop might be the way to go for someone who's experienced in other kinds of art. Check with local schools, art supply stores, art guilds, or look for collage courses at Arts and Crafts schools such as Penland, Haystack, or Arrowmont. You'll find workshop information in art magazines such as American Artist, Fiberarts, Watercolorist. Learning good composition comes both from working and from careful observation. Get an idea of what's being done by attending exhibitions at museums and galleries. Read books about collage.

As you look and read ask yourself questions about the work you're seeing: What's the background? How is it prepared? What is applied to this surface? Where does the color come from? What is the artist conveying? Is there a story or is it formal design? Why is some work in the middle of the page while in other pieces the artist worked out to the edges? What is the compositional structure? Do I like this work and why or why not?

Start making what I call Collage-A-Day. Using a journal or cardstock cut to 5 ½ X 8 ½ make one collage every day. Work fast, spending no more than 15 minutes on each collage. Use no more than 5 elements. Look and consider before you glue everything down, but don't agonize over it. You'll just naturally get better as you become more experienced. Remember that bad art I told you to get out of your system! Set up a small space where you can do this. You'll need scissors, glue, your substrate (journal or cardstock) and scraps of paper which could include junk mail, magazine pages, photos, decorative papers, pattern tissue, wrapping papers, street papers. That's all you really need.Start collecting collage elements. A collage artist by necessity becomes a collector of ephemera. While you might start with junk mail you'll learn to ransack magazines for appealing images and blocks of color and text. Eventually you'll want to add a wide variety of quality papers and you may want to paint or dye your papers, or even create handmade paper to use in your work.And you'll need to go through the glue selection process. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of adhesives available to use. One good basic glue mix is 1 part white glue plus 1 part acrylic matte medium, applied with a brush. Each artist will tell you something different, and you'll learn that you have your preferences for different purposes. You may want to use UHU glue sticks for your Collage-A-Day work.

Supports-substrates-backings can vary, also. Heavy cardstock works, as do other heavy papers. 140# to 300# watercolor paper is great for special work. Cardboard is stiff enough but has so much acid in it that it's not recommended for work you want to give or sell.Now, go to work. Work some more. Work some more. Jump in and do it. Enjoy the process of working and have a good time.

Door Collage

My art group met today to work on collages with doors as the subject... sort of like Roben Marie's Happy Gam Road collages. Here's mine from today which uses lots of my painted papers, my father's photo, and a photo of a door in France.

These next two were done earlier in the summer.

Stencilry

I'm enrolled in an online class called Pure Experimentation where the curriculum is all about stenciling using spray paint, spray ink, brushes and sponges to create visual journal pages. I already use alphabet stencils to create my Sermon Notes series but this will add another dimension to those and other works of art.

The class was designed by Mary Ann Moss, Dispatch from LA, and is excellent, with PDF lessons complete with photos and dozens of short videos in which MA demonstrates her skills with her favorite art tools. Many everyday items can be used as stencils: lace, plastic doilies and placemats, nursery flats, sequin waste (love those holes). And now we're transforming clip art and photos into stencils using the computer, exacto knives, and stencil burners. Over the last week I've set up 2 different spray booths: one is set up in the garage and is made from an upside down card table, an old sheet, and a trash can. (This is what I use on rainy days.) and the other is a simple setup on my studio balcony where I draped a canvas drop cloth over the table and pinned the outer edges to the railing so I don't inadvertently paint the side of the house.

Barron Storey

Life After Black: The Visual Journals of Barron Storey, an exhibit of his journals is currently on view at the Museum of American Illustration in NYC, through the end of July. How I wish I could see these books in person; I'm amazed that they are displayed in such a way as to allow viewers to actually browse through them! I was in the right place at the right time to buy one of the 1000 copies of Barron Storey: The Marat/Sade Journals... in 1993 when it was first published, and I've spent hours pouring over his intricate drawings and varied handwritten text. In the video above you can get an idea about what one person can do with a blank book when he puts his mind to it. If you're interested in knowing more do a search on his name.

Limited Palette

Paula asked which colors I chose for my limited palette. This one is modeled after one of Cathy Johnson's, including the altered paintbox itself which is a Koi painbox. I removed the original contents, leaving only the little waterbrush, and added full and half pans into which I squeezed Transparent Yellow, Quin. Red, Winsor Blue, Paynes Gray, Burnt Sienna and Raw Sienna. There are 2 watercolor brushes, a #1 liner and a 1/4" flat with sharpened ends for scratching back, plus a sponge, pencil and sharpener, and molded eraser. You can see by my dirty palette that I reused dried puddles and I don't often clean my colors, preferring to dip into whatever is there that's useable.

Part of the looseness is due to the finish on the moleskine pages. Mine is the sketchbook with the slightly yellow and stiff pages, and unless I wipe the page down with a moist towel to remove the sizing the pages slightly repel water. I like the look but watercolor purists rail against the paper and use other books. I chose moleskine because of the overall quality of the book. It stands up to just about any abuse and since I carry this book in my purse everywhere I go I need the strong structure.

It doesn't matter which colors you choose for your limited palette as long as you've experimented with them enough to know that you can mix satisfactory colors... good greens, bright purples and magentas, and orange. If the yellow, red, and blue you already own as long as they mix to form beautiful secondary and tertiary colors. And of course, be creative with color, using any color to represent any object, as long as the value is right. I could make my daytime sky pink and my water purple, as long as the pink is light and the purple is dark.

And BTW, the link to Cathy Johnson is to her Art Tips page where there is scads of information on how to paint with watercolor. She's the master!

Portland Waterfront - sketching with friends

"I love to check your blog after our sketching days.. to see where we were through your eyes because what you drew is sure different than what I did", said my friend Linda after our Saturday outing to the Portland waterfront. We found a lovely park on the riverbank and after wandering through the plantings awhile we parked ourselves on a shady bench and set to work. Of course it's much more pleasant to sketch en plein air on sunny days with a slight breeze in a beautiful place and we agreed that we'll return many times.

I worked in my little Moleskine journal with my tiny limited palette of 6 colors and a miniature waterbrush. I love being unencumbered by unlimited art supplies when I venture out of my studio to work... no heavy bag to weight me down... just the things I always carry so that it's becoming a habit to pull out my sketchbook whenever I have a few minutes to see my world through artist's eyes. And of course the more I do it the better I will get.

A couple of days ago my youngest granddaughter and I drove to the coast to deliver an order and to enjoy a day together. She's nearly 9 and a joy to be with one on one. She has boundless energy and yet is content to let grandma sit on the park bench while she plays. We found a great park with monster playground equipment, walked the beach and played in the wet sand, ate lunch at a popular seafood cafe, and managed to get home in time for her gymnastics class. I started one on one 'grandma days' with my grands years ago and we all look forward to this time together, building relationships and memories, as we do a variety of fun stuff including lots of art making and museums.

Painting for the love of trees

This was my childhood home and MY oak tree. Pop made many swings over the years and hung them from a rope or a chain from one of its sturdy branches. There was no need of a fancy swing set, not when I had a swing that took me high enough to kick a cluster of leaves way up in the tree itself.

I can’t imagine living where there are few trees, like in the western Oklahoma panhandle or the Great Plains, or the Australian Outback. Trees have always been a living presence in my life and here in northwestern Oregon you simply can’t get away from trees, from the smallest of the Japanese Maples to the towering redwoods in our old growth forests.  I've just started thinking about drawing and painting trees, which is really strange, now that I’m thinking about my lifelong love affair with trees of all kinds. I've climbed them, eaten their fruit, cleaned up the messes they drop in high winds or in season, pruned them, grow them (we own a tree nursery, Reimer Nursery LLC, where we grow exotic trees for the wholesale trade), and I've photographed lots of trees wherever I’ve traveled, including a few favorites in Australia, including a huge ghost gum.

Lots of painters have been enamored by trees; I certainly don’t have a unique infatuation with them, but I’ll bet I can come up with something that stands out.

What I intend to do is draw and journal about and paint trees until the trees I show you will tell you something about trees that’s different than what the next guy has to say. I think I can do that and have a jolly good time working figuring out this new-to-me path. Well now, I think I just stated a new goal!

Does anyone have any idea what this tree is, the one with red twigs and red berries? The photo was take in Oklahoma City in the fall and I've been trying to identify it ever since.

But wait... trees have leaves so I guess I need to include drawing the leaves. This photo is of an acer palmatum "Bloodgood" in my front yard.

Red Clover Landscape Sketches

About this time every spring many of the fields in the valley west of town turn bright red with the blossoms of red clover which is grown for seed. Most of the fields are pure clover with few weeds, just acres and acres of red blossoms with bright green clover leaves hidden underneath. I spent part of Memorial Day alone at the edge of one such field, taking photos and making some color sketches in my journal, doing enough of the work of looking closely so that some day soon the clover will appear in a painting or two.

The sketch on the left is a color field study, supposedly showing the bands of color as I saw them but I didn't nail the values. In landscape painting the sky is the lightest color... #1, the ground is the second lightest...#2 because it reflects the light from the sky. Hills are darker, being on a slant and relecting some light but not as much as the ground, and the trees are the darkest dark...#4, because they don't reflect light except where the sun hits one side in early morning and late afternoon. Can you see that I got it right in the landscape sketch but not in the color field study? Now I'm on a mission to do my best to paint landscapes in only 4 values until I can do it in my sleep.

This last drawing is full of nostalgia. On the way home I drove out Kaiser Road and stopped at the cemetary that's at the corner of the acreage where we used to live. My children waited for the school bus near these 4 big old trees that stand guard over the cemetary where there's a headstone that states that Charles and Catherine Reimer rest here. Now they are no kin of ours, even though we share the same last name, but when we bought the property we sort of adopted this couple even though he died in 1917, the year my father entered the navy in WWI, and she died in 1944 while we were fighting WWII.

And finally, let me introduce you to "Wilson", a brush that John Lovett gave me. It's an ordinary cheapo throwaway brush from the hardware store, an Australian one (though you can find a similar one in your local hardware store for 79 cents). Wilson is great for lots of things, including fields of red clover, grass, and tree leaves.

Checkerboard Tree

Often when I start working I have no idea what to paint, perhaps because I haven't given enough thought to the things that make my life unique or to ways that I am to use these life experiences to make my work have meaning.

Robert Burridge told me to work with intention... definitely a contradiction to slapping on the paint and paper with no end in mind. He says that he does his Morning Pages first thing every morning and from that exercise he states his intentions. Bob says not to start a painting without knowing what the 3-Cs will be: Content, Composition, Color combination.

Cathy Woo talks about organizing a painting with the elements and principles of design in mind.

With this advice in mind I've made up little cards that help guide me when I start a painting, though I sometimes go down a different pathway right in the middle of my work. When starting to work I take a card and write out my intentions:

Series/Theme...
Composition...
Design Element... (balance, repetition, etc.)
Dominant Color
Complementary color
2 Spice Colors
Key (high, low)


The collage painting above is one I've worked on off and on for months but it lacked something, so yesterday I sat down and journaled about recurring themes and images that interest me with the intent of developing lots of drawings that symbolize these themes. One was trees. I could not live where there are no trees. I love trees. I climbed plenty as a kid and had several tree swings. I grow trees and prune them. I take shelter under them from rain and sun. So I gulped big, said a quick prayer for a steady hand, picked up a Pitt brush pen and drew this tree directly on the lovely background, praying I wouldn't ruin it. I didn't.

GrapeVine

I enjoyed an art date with my friend Jean Gale last Friday and came home absolutely aching to work. Jean showed me some collages she was working on, done on top of failed watercolor paintings and seeing hers gave me permission to try to make something of the stack of painted watercolors that have sat gathering dust in my closet. Some time ago I decided to make paintings in sizes that fit ready made frames, so I tore the paintings into quarter sheet sizes as well as 7.5 inch squares and into 5 x 7 inch chunks. Then I pulled out a quarter sheet, chose collage papers in colors that worked with the underpainting and set to work. The collage was finished in no time and then I set to work adding some journaling. Since the papers were all about grapevines I chose to write out Jesus's words from John 15:5... "I am the vine, you are the branches; apart from me you can do nothing". It worked, I think... at least my husband complimented me. Some days I work for compliments.