Funky Friday (4) Challenging Yourself

Challenging Yourself

I feel that challenging oneself creatively by limiting yourself the amount of on-hand supplies when developing an art piece a good tool to help you think out of the box as an artist. In Feb. of 2010, I decided to participate in the 12^th International Collage Exhibition/Exchange taking place in New Zealand. We had just moved back to Key West and living among moving boxes in a temporary rental. It was a lifestyle we called “glorified camping”. I saw the collage exchange posted on an Internet Assemblage Group I belonged to. Since we were in a holding pattern waiting to move into our home, I thought this would be a good project for me to get involved in to keep my mind “busy”.

 The idea behind the exchange was to make 13, 8’x10’ collages. Twelve of the collages would be exchanged and returned to me from 12 other artists from around the world, and one would be shown in an exhibit at the Real Tart Gallery in New Plymouth, NZ.  I thought receiving artwork from artists from around the world would be fun. In actuality, I received a lot more than that.

As I mentioned before, I was in the mist of moving. Everything I owned was pretty much, in a box. This is where the challenge began. Having very little access to my supplies, I had to come up with ways to make the collages with very few resources. I was able to recover some paper a pair of scissors, some markers and a glue stick. Now the fun began.

I began to cut out pictures and words from magazines, catalogs and newspapers. I pulled cereal and snack boxes out of the recycling bin and cut out letters from them to make designs, rolled up pieces of corrugated boxes to make stamps that resembled roses.  Paper towel tubes were great for circles.  Sometimes I would have a glass of wine while I worked and used the cork as a stamp and wine as ink! Not having much to work with, pushed me to be resourceful in using what was around me. I didn’t feel limited at all.

At completion of my 13^th collage I was please at was what I have accomplished. A couple of months later, I was happy to receive 12 wonderful collages from artist within the US and as far away as Australia. At the end of the exhibit, my piece that was in the exhibit was sent to be in permanent museum collection with the other collages in the ArtColle in Brittany, France.

As a reminder of this fun experience, I framed two of the collages I received and hung them in our home.

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