http://zebracrossing.org/ I thought I'd do a link here to Ellen Golla's website. I've written about her in my sketchbook for two different projects, "Animals" and "Collage" and I just love her images and little constructions. The tiny books in little medicine capsules are amazing, how on earth would you make them? The quote by her on the first page is very inspiring, "I love the scent of paper, the textures of paper, and the endless possibilities of paper. My paper mosaic collages are intricately composed of hundreds of little bits of cut paper," and in an image like "Tea Time with Gordy" which I've included above from the Bridgeman Education site, it perfectly shows off each one of these tiny slices of paper, stuck together to suggest the movement of water, rushing the collection of tea set pieces, including a swan in a tea cup, over the edge of the table, like a waterfall, where they will surely crash. There's usually a slightly Surrealist element to her images, such as the swan in a tea cup, or maybe it's just there to show her sense of humour.
I've experimented with her way of working for the project "Collage" and found it to be very labour intensive, and I didn't even cut the pieces as small as she does. In the end I found that combining paper and paint, such as Mike Bernard's method was much more to my liking, but I'm glad that I experimented with a few different ways to find out. From studying this image above I imagine that she used the collage mosaic method for the background but used whole images for the tea set, as they look too perfect and smooth to have been constructed from many small pieces of paper. Her website says that she often uses her own images so I guess that's what she did here and took photo's especially for this composition.
Hi Lucie--Goodness, what a nice surprise to find such a lovely post about my work! Thanks. I'm genuinely touched you've found my site and my artwork inspiring. And thanks for joining my blog, which is how I discovered your sites, which are quite enjoyable and informative. I especially like your collage info here and how you describe and analyze your process. I'll definitely be following!
ReplyDeleteI can confirm that doing something like the swans here is quite labor-intensive. I think it took a couple of months, working a bit on it every day. And, yes, the cups, teapot, swans etc are from photos I took. The swans were from a park in Ontario, Canada from a trip many years ago. Actually, he was one swan that was being bullied by a couple of others in the pond. I took a liking to him and took several pictures just to add to my files.
As for the little books... clamping a straight-edge to the table over the nearly 1/4" wide books helped.
I thought I would point out that the link to my site doesn't seem to be working--it looks like an extra "http:" got added by accident in the pasting. It's: http://zebracrossing.org
Again, thanks so much for the incredibly nice commentary. It made my day.
I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of your rather interesting art explorations!
Thank you so much! I'm feeling very starstruck! With this course I'm making a purposeful effort to research contemporary artists to inspire and inform my own work, but I never dreamed one of those artists would write to me about my work!
ReplyDeleteI've sorted out the link to your site, it's working fine now, I'm still learning lots about how the internet works!
A friend of mine here in California who teaches Welsh language classes declared your post here "Ardderchog!" You're so kind. As for the Internet, alas... the worst thing I ever did was work on a web site! I hate to point it out, but the link still doesn't seem to work, at least on my end. I think it needs a colon after the http? http://www.zebracrossing.org I hope that helps. !@#$% computer stuff... drives me crazy too!
ReplyDeleteHow do you have a friend in California who teaches Welsh!? That's quite surreal. I know there's a Welsh community living in Patagonia (a friend of mine who works for the Welsh board here has gone to visit there) but I had no idea about Califorina! Tell your friend "Diolch yn fawr iawn!"
ReplyDeletePlus the link is working now, at last, the colon did the trick.