Collage.. College.. Ugh.

I'm collaging my way to college. I think that's a good way to put it. The whole end of the year thing is bugging my brain, so I collage. Collages are a visual representation of how my mind works.

I started with the above. I basically ran through the STAC room after everyone left and collected what I could find and decided to make a mess out of my living room floor. It was all out of anger.

I took ideas away, I kind of contemplated it a lot. But I went with the, "get shit done" attitude.



This is the end product. I tackled a 24x36 piece in a day. Minor details were added a few days later. But this is it. It turned into a search for identity I believe so. I'm proud of it, despite all the hidden anger I involved somehow.

On the last day I worked on this, we ordered Chinese food in STAC. I love fortune cookies, so ofcourse, I cracked it open. It said, "We don't know who we are until we can see what we can do." My reaction: Holy Shit. It's my life. So I placed it on my favorite color, the teal, and I put it right above my favorite photograph. Ta da. Art.

A couple of days later, Luke gave me a canvas and told me to make a collage. He said, "when you look at a building, it looks like a box. When you look closer, it looks like a bunch of boxes. But when you look at a cathedrial, it has a shape. And when you get closer, it has amazing detail." Basically, something that looks one way when it's far, and has a different experience when it's closer. Ok, well..

I made this piece that I didn't like. I was basically doing it to satisfy Luke (sorry Luke), but I realized that that shouldn't be my reason for making art. I ripped it off the next day.

Here's the outcome. You see the newspaper and how it's ripped? That wasn't my intentions. The newspaper was originally towers and that's what I tried ripping off. But since I'm a professional glue sticker, it didn't want to get off at all. So I left it. I was angry, once again, and I was flipping through magazines with sizzors in hand picking random words. Luke said to stay away from words (which is my favorite part of collages, and although I love Luke's advice, it gives me two options.. his choice or the opposite. I chose the opposite). So the collage is mostly words and one visual that pretty much sums the whole thing up. I picked these five words, & coincidently and it formed a sentence. This was before I decided to look closer at the newspaper.

I was in my car with Courtney (my community) examining the piece I did out of anger, and she was looknig closely at the newspaper. We noticed a bunch of words such as: "exploding", "killing me", "criticism", "misunderstood", "lunatic", "wandered", "broken", "self-reference", "disrespectful", "screamed", and yes, "photography". The piece has my name all over it. We decided to box in the words.

In the end, I have completed Luke's task. You get a different feel for the piece when your far or close away.

I started a project at home now. I guess my art is all over the place. See what happens when you move the damn lens from your face? There's actually a world out there.


more to come.
-ashleycoppolino