Artroom

In college when I took the course Freehand II, there was a project we did that involved charcoal rubbings on tracing paper collaged with colored inks. Later on when I was teaching, I thought I’d experiment with the same method. I already had those supplies and I wanted to convince my students to work with mixed media. So I created this piece as a sample. Usually if the students saw me enjoy making a piece first it was an easier sales job to convince them.


mixed media, 11" x 15"

This time I used rice paper to make charcoal rubbings from objects and surfaces around the artroom. I then painted matte acrylic polymer to adhere the rubbings to watercolor paper. After the rubbings were dry, I spray fixed them. I then painted layers of color inks on top of them.

While digging through some boxes I found this piece. I think I will try to do some more works using these materials. It’s a direction that I really had not pursued.

Purple Blend

Do you ever read the Sunday comics in full color? Did you realize you’re looking at pieces of the Sunday comics right now?

This collage is made up of pieces of the Sunday comics collected between September 2004 and March 2007. The only thing that they have in common are the colors. Speedball acrylic gloss is used to glue them down on Reeves BFK paper. I recently took a break from my dot artwork to complete this piece.


collage, 10.5" x 19"

So what made me create this work?

Well back in the summer of 1998 I took a trip to Chicago and saw the work of Ray Yoshida. He taught at the School of Art at the Institute of Chicago. I enjoyed the show so much I bought a catalog.

It wasn't until seven years later in March of 2005 that I got around to doing a piece in the spirit of the work I saw in Chicago. Cutting out the pieces from the Sunday funnies was very time consuming. I wanted my students to see how the context of the comics could be changed in a collage. It was a good way to show them how to use found materials.