The-Art-Of-Collage

The Baker's Dozen is back. What's this about, each participant sends up to 7 collages and gets in return up to 6 collages (one is kept by the museum). I forgot to mention that exchange is hosted by  the International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. If you would like to participate send your package before the end of the month. More details you can find on the museum's site collagemuseum.com/internationa…

I encourage you to participate. It is an interesting experience, you can see how other people work and you will also feel like a child on Christmas Eve when the package arrives. So, lets participate. I'm looking forward to seeing your works.

The White-On-White challenge is now closed.
The work that was sent to this challenge was, and still is, impressive. Fine, fine work.
Thanks to the members who participated -- if my count is accurate, 17 members submitted 28 collages.

The slide show of the W.O.W challenge is directly below this journal article. It will stay up for another week or so.

Every now and then I go through the collage channel and tag certain pieces as “misplaced” along with the comment, “This is not a collage.”  Pieces like compilations of celebrity photos, style or fashion boards and sketch dumps. This is not a value judgement, only an observation that these do not belong in the collage channel. A couple of times I sent a comment directly to the submitter asking why he or or she thinks the piece is a collage or asking what specific element is collaged on the piece.  The replies include, “I didn’t know where else to put it.”  to  “It was a mistake. It should have been in . . . “ 

However, once I got a more detailed response that ended with, “Feel free to disagree.”  So I accepted the invitation.  This is a slightly edited version of how I tried to explain why a sketch dump is not a collage. 

Yes, a collage is "many different things making a whole."  To be accurate, the word "whole" has to mean more than just all the images are on the same page. Putting a bunch of images on the same page does not automatically make something a collage.

To be a collage the whole has to be greater than the sum of the parts. There has to be a unified whole. In a sketch dump or other kinds of compilations  (fan art, style boards, etc.), you look at one image, then you look at another, and so on. The parts remain parts.

In collage, as in any art work, composition is important. In a sketch dump, as far as I can tell, there is no intentional composition. The goal of a sketch dump seems to be to put as many sketches as will fit onto one page. There is no focal point. Little variety. Little contrast. No consideration of placement. No taking advantage of being able to juxtapose images to create impact.

The word collage comes from the French for "to glue."  If there is not at least one element glued or fixed in some way onto the surface, then it's not a collage. Digital collages use layers to achieve the same thing.  However, if you cut out each of your sketches and glued them back onto one sheet of paper, it would still need some unifying principle at work to help it become a collage rather than just a collection of images. 

Feel free to comment.

As I mentioned back in the “update” journal of June 18, a few words are in order about how The Art Of Collage group works – the mechanics, expectations, challenges, etc.

There is a group of admins who invite work to various folders and who vote on submitted work. One vote is needed for acceptance into all folders except the Featured folder. As it stands now, two votes are needed for the Featured folder. That may change as the admin group looks at other ways to handle that folder.

The good side of having different admins invite and vote is that it guarantees no one person’s taste dominates the group folders. It makes for a vibrant group that shows a broad range of quality collage work. The down side is that it might give the appearance of inconsistency. The admins don’t always agree with each other. To me, that is as it should be but I know this apparent uncertainty frustrates some members. Those members may see the selection process as “haphazard” while I see it as dynamic and reflecting a very diverse membership. If we all liked the same thing, I suspect the group would end up being pretty boring and eventually all the collage groups on dA would look the same.  

I’m confident our group does a good job of respecting many variables such as showing quality work, being supportive, and representing a diverse membership with widely varying aesthetics.

Here are other journal articles about the group:
fav.me/d7mxyri
fav.me/d78m6kn