to understand what collaging means to me, and also what it means for the space I’m making, i had to dissect my style of collaging

this meant making loads of them and also comparing them to other collage artists

to me, collaging happens intuitively; it’s a way of making by breaking patterns to create a new one. I find something I like, maybe it’s an image, maybe it’s a solid colour, maybe it’s part of a drawing I made myself, and I move it about a page until it feels right.  Maybe it feels right somewhere but it’s missing something, so I’ll find the puzzle piece that fits. 

I also like when things reoccur. whether it’s subtle or bold. A little bit of pink here, might mean a big stripe of pink in a different corner as well.  

If I compare my collages to those of Anthony Gerace, there’s a stark difference: He often uses only 2-3 images which he cuts up in even squares and mixes together into a new, distorted composition. It’s consistent and very interesting to look at. 

If I then look at collages of robin will kimmer, his are often based on a single image which he deconstructs through extractions, and turns into a diptych. together, they tell two sides of a single story. 

Twiggy Boyer, one of my favorite collage artists, heavilly focuses on old photographs and the addition of colour into them. they’re human-focused and often touch on memory and nostalgia. 

If I then lay my collages near these examples, you’ll see how different each one is from one another. you can tell each wasn’t made by the same person.

Mine often read as a landscape, or a space, and i can envision people moving through them. sometimes they’re added. other times, they’re excluded. Like I said before, there’s reoccurrence and repetition. And the composition is based entirely on intuition. 

When creating collages that were spatial to me, I wanted them to be interactive, to be viewed from multiple angles, to invite movement. This resulted into pertruding elements, folds, hinges and peepholes. These same elements are what I decided to carry into designing my space.