International Collage Exchange (ICE) 2009

Laser photocopied photo's (mine!) recycled newspaper article and heading, tracing paper, mulberry paper, magazine paper (eggs) embroidery thread. The article discusses how the loss of trees is effecting our future and that of many animal species. The heading was unrelated until I put them together!

Close up of the nest and bird (wahoo!) The bird photo (below) is beneath the nest image which was partly transparent. I am very pleased with this result!

These laser copied photos of mine will feature strongly in this years ICE collection.

International Collage Exchange 2009, Collage 01.

Title: The consumer is King

Here it is! At last and definitely- my 1st of 13 collages for the upcoming exchange (formerly known as the Bakers Dozen.) There are lots of happy accidents and twists of fate that lead to the creation of this collage. First off it started with the ideas I expressed here earlier about the earth being the 'hand that feeds us' and the continuation of using nests as symbols of society and birds as symbols of people . I realllly wanted to use my own images this time. I take hundreds of photos so it was a natural path for me to follow, it just took me a long time to make those first steps! I didn't alter the bird photo's with the intention of using them here, it was a nice little fluke. I took them to the print shop to get the printed and I was so pleased with them I decided that they HAD to be my image source for this series. The nest is the photo I took with the intention of reproducing it in collages a little while ago now. It took me quite a long time to decide on how to print these for collage work. Photographic paper is quite heavy and plasticy but at 19c a print is was the most economical option. Tempting. Copying onto the transparency plastic sheets was appealing from an creative point of view but it was expensive to both my pocket and the environment and they couldn't print in colour. I still wanted to be able to 'see through' some of my images to view layers so the lady at the shop suggested tracing paper. Perfect! A nice balance between pocket and environmental cost, lightweight and versatile! I got the nests photocopied onto the tracing paper (no colour option with this either) and the birds laser copied which was more expensive than using a real photo but it was countered by the lighter weight of the less plasticy paper. I did all of this thinking in the shop and by the time I left I am sure the lady thought I was a crazy greenie but that's ok by me. I sometimes wonder too! lol

As for the happy accidents that happened along the way, the nest and the bird were not planned to start with. I was gathering all the pieces together when I notice how the bird had ended up in the nest in my hand! Too good not use I thought! It was while I was assembling the collage and I had all my pieces laid out on the floor when an almost disaster happened. Evidently I didn't get enough sleep last night. I got up to grab the thread and the next thing I knew an entire cup of black coffee was knocked over and it was all over my unglued collage, a library book, the carpet and even up the wall...after the initial swearing I cleaned up the mess, peeled apart my images and examined the damage. I could either work with the brown coffee stained papers or throw them away....as you can see I chose to work with most of them and I am even (very) pleased with the results!