Collage Process (part 1)

This is one of several articles to be completed over the coming year in conjunction with an art project. These articles may be revised, reordered, rewritten and polished along the way.

Project:

Create one collage every day using images, words and detritus culled from the New York Times for that day.

At the beginning of the year, I tasked myself with creating one collage every day for at least a year.

I scheduled an exhibition for December, and began figuring out the details for this process:
What materials would I use? What size would these things be?
etc.

I don't intend to share any of the collages until the exhibition, but, I thought it might be interesting to detail the technical steps I'm using in their creation with the occasional peek at the process I went through to get here.

Dimensions and Support:

I decided to use my old standard 4" by 6" postcard size. Corrugated cardboard, generally cut from a beer box, has always been my choice for postcards, but for this I would want something a little more permanent. The fact that I would be using newspaper as a source for materials prevented the resulting work from being archival, but I still wanted some more formal materials to work with.

I considered wood (thinking, "wood is just a more permanent form of cardboard, right?") and tried a few experiments. I tried it plain and gessoed and treated and all sorts of ways until I came to this conclusion:

Wood is too expensive and difficult-to-use a surface for this kind of endeavor. It was a bad fit.

After some thinking, I came to the conclusion that a nice heavy paper was going to be the best option. I bought a couple of sketchbooks of varying weights and took them home to play with. I finally decided on 140 lb (300 gsm) watercolor paper for its combination of sturdiness and pliability. The paper would absorb the glue and not be distorted by the moisture. This is also the heaviest weight watercolor paper that is readily available at your local art supply store.

During the search for paper, I realized I may want some room to color outside the lines. This was gong to be, at the very least, a yearlong project, and the 4 by 6 inches of space I had defined may prove to be a bit claustrophobic by the middle of June. So, I decided to work on a bigger piece of paper (an extra inch or so around the edge would probably do) while still focusing on the 4" by 6" center of the composition. This would give me the ability to zero in on the area and size I was comfortable with while having the option of breaking those boundaries if the need should arise. (Claustrophobia averted.)

My final decision was to go with a 9" by 12" Canson Watercolor pad, the pages of which could be cut into two perfectly sized supports to work on. There were 12 sheets in the pad, which would give me 24 collages. At roughly 9 bucks, that worked out to just about 40 cents apiece. This was the perfect solution; a good, stable, yet flexible support at an economical price.

Now, what kind of glue was I going to use?

Adhesive:

I've always used a simple little Elmer's Glue Pen (as well as Scotch Tape) for my postcard collages. It's portable and holds up pretty well bouncing around inside my bag all day.

I wasn't going to be toting these around (they would be made in the studio) so portability became a non-issue. What was more important was the finished product. I spent an evening with a few different glues attaching scraps of newspaper to swatches of watercolor paper looking for just the right combination. To get a handle on whether there was a need to stretch the watercolor paper, I also varied the amount of water involved.

The end result was this:

• For best results, the paper should be stretched,
• Mod Podge Matte should be used as the primary adhesive, and
• sealing the collage after the fact with another layer of glue has a tendency to create unpredictable (and undesirable) effects with the delicate newsprint.

Along the way, I realized I wanted the glue to be invisible after drying. I wanted it to do it's job and not get in the way. That was the primary reason for choosing the Mod Podge.

Sadly, my trusty ol' Elmer's Glue Pen didn't make the cut because of the glossy shine he left behind.

We all have things we're good at.
He's still my go-to guy for smackin' shit together at the coffeeshop.