Love Hurts

I appreciate collage's meanings made through juxtapositions, papers and textures, objects, ideas and emotions, colors, shapes, lines, cutting and attaching methods, living next to each other, creating dialogues, sometimes hilarious and scary and potentially catastrophic, but also hopeful. These specific collages appreciate the thingness of the papers--dyed, aged, sun-bleached, folded, taped--contrasting with the glossiness of the magazine cuttings--the sparkliness of the people, the cleanness of them, the false veneer--which begs the question of what lies below these people's surfaces. What lies beneath your/my surfaces? And then, how do they/we relate to their/our environments?
I started making these collages by placing glossy fashion/travel magazine people against tactile papers I'd dyed and aged, very much enjoying the process of exploring, trying to find connections and juxtapositions between the two in order to discover new meanings, designs, and to have fun! I fought collage's urge to add more, more, more, and enjoyed the challenge of minimalism to focus on the relationship between the designed papers and the magazine clippings' formal veneer. I wanted to see how much I could say juxtaposing as few parts as possible, like visual haiku/senryu.
Sometimes, I'd start by looking through the papers I'd dyed/aged and a particular shape or negative space there would spark an idea, feeling, or potential. Then, I'd go through magazines and consider if something would fit in that space, but also, what that color of paper, or shape's potential, would mean in relation to the magazine image/images. Then, I'd cut out the magazine image and dance it around the paper, maybe try another paper, maybe cut something from the image in a particular shape using scissors or by tearing the image with my fingers, again, considering how the tear or cut might not only fit with the paper design-wise, but what that said by putting the two together. Finally, I'd glue it all together.
At other times, just the opposite: I'd comb through magazines, considering an idea/ideas or feeling, then go to the papers, again, playing with placement on the page, and gluing at the end.