fifi’s graffiti and graveyards

I don’t know why I make things complicated. This project, which has been lying on my bedroom floor for about two months is a good example. I started out with a piece of kraft envelope that I’d experimented on with pen and paint, and found a headline and an eyeless model whose peepers had been used on something else, and together they suggested the beginning of a noir story. I kept finding more pieces that I added to the composition until it almost filled the 16 by 24 inch board I was working on. When I got around to gluing everything together there were just too many pieces. I reluctantly discarded at least half. I thought I was happy with the 6×8 end result, but now I find I like it better in the 4×6 form you see at the top of the page. I ended up with the very piece of paper I started with.

I’m generally ruthless about cropping my photos. It’s easy to look the whole piece and notice something out of balance. I collected it all with a single press of a button, so trimming something doesn’t feel like slicing away my own work. My job in that case IS to trim. With collage, since I start with a blank canvas, each piece I add seems important. I went to a lot of trouble to seach for it and cut it out after all, so deleting anything seems like negating my hard work. Once I started ripping off pieces that had already become stuck to the composition I realized it is STILL my job to trim, to crop, to get rid of what doesn’t work. I have to become ruthless about cropping my collages.

Here’s the 6×8 piece I cropped from. I’m still not sure what I will end up doing with it. I learned a couple of practical lessons with this project to go along with the aesthetics.

It’s hard to write a story one word at a time, especially if you’re clipping the words from a fashion magazine. U.S. magazines in English don’t seem to use white-on-black type for articles like French magazines do. I had to get my words from ads, and there is a limited and very stylized use of language in them. Still, I like the bare bones of the story I was able to come up with.

“Magic” markers in black make an interesting background on textured paper. I had a permanent marker that was almost dry and it went well with the black and white clippings of old buildings. The upper right corner was the marker working well, and the drawing I added to the buildings in the lower right was the marker running out of ink. It was fun coloring with the marker; it covered a lot of ground and dried quickly.