Collage Art and Ergonomics
Journal Entry: Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Collage Art and Ergonomics
I first got serious about making collage art in 1982. I decided that I would just make whatever came to me with whatever material I could find. I decided to make collages as a form of diary working on collages pretty much every day. I titled this series the Fusion Series from the very beginning and numbered all of the works in chronological order. Right now there are about 4,150 collages in the series covering a wide variety of ideas. The idea was ‘of combining things to form a new whole’. On average, I have completed a collage on paper every three days for 40+ years and I have made a few hundred collages on canvas or panel that are numbered in another series.
At the beginning I was mainly trying to find my footing with collage and figure out my approach or approaches to constructing collages. I am mostly into abstraction and not that attracted to pop or figurative imagery, but, since I do whatever comes to mind based on the papers I am using, these kinds of works do make an occasional appearance in my work.
However, the main subject I want to address is the problem of scale in collage art. Almost all paper collage materials are, for the most part, build around the principle of ergonomics which is to say around the usability, comfort and efficiency of things that humans handle and use on a regular basis.
When it comes to paper this has meant creating paper objects that carry images, documentary information and language in a way that is easy to handle, easy to read and look at such as maps, letters, notes, business documents, magazines, newspapers and books that are held in the hands and looked at in close proximity for the eye’s focal point. In short, at ‘arm’s length’. In the public space this will be larger posters and billboards that are seen from a distance.
This means that most of the paper goods that collage artists use are small which leads to the likelihood of making small works. Over the years I have developed a love for the small intimate nature of collage art and the paper artifacts used in making collages.
For many years I was very happy making lovely small collages as small as 5x4 inches and up to about 12 x 9 inches, that is my favorite range of sizes. But since they are so small I tend to isolate these images on a larger sheet of watercolor paper so that I have a 3-5 inch paper border around the collages to give them the visual space they need to be isolated from the environment.
I always liked the idea of thinking about collage on paper organized in stacks inside of flat files. As collectable objects they are small and manageable and moveable. But this is one of the problems of collage art. It is small. It is nearly impossible to make a living from the sale of small works of art on paper. The number of works a collage artist would have to sell to make a living strictly from the sale of collages would typically exceed the ability to produce enough of them. This does not take into account the problem of finding enough collectors to purchase them. In general, it is not possible. This also does not take into account the expense of presentation such as framing which is quite expensive.
This became a problem for me as a professional artist once I started putting the numbers to the situation. I realized that if I was in galleries, that the dealers would also have to make the decision of the viability of selling small works on paper. At this point most dealers are not interested. It is not economically feasible for a dealer to waste their time selling small works except as an accessory object or an afterthought. I would have to figure out how to make larger more substantial works typical of the ergonomics of architectural interiors, not the ergonomics of reading printed information as is the typical scale of collage materials.
My personal solution was to think of my collage works as studies for larger paintings on canvas. I develop images and compositions in collage as preparatory studies. I think of them as scores as in ‘musical scores’ or the Fluxus idea of ‘event scores’. The collage is the score for the performance of a painting.
Not all of my collages will be made into paintings but with enough collage making certain ones will attract me to explore them as paintings. Making collages in large numbers allows me to work through my ideas quickly at a small, manageable scale and then select from those the ones that will be suitable for making paintings. The other advantage to this approach is that I can have the small collages for a very long time which allows me to contemplate them and decide if I want to make a painting even much later as my body of paintings develops. This gives me a big pool of imagery to work from.
Since paintings for the gallery market are important for making a living, then the bigger the better. The art market is a luxury market and the collectors, though relatively few, tend to be wealthy and tend to see collectable art as an asset. As artists, we have to take this fact into account. Although it took me a few years to figure this out, at this point I usually don’t spend my time on smallish paintings. I do continue to make some medium sized paintings but primarily my focus is on 6 x 7 feet canvases and larger.
Taking into account the practicalities of the ergonomics of transportation and residential homes in the United States, I make paintings that will fit through a typical front door of a house and into the back of a typical art delivery service van. This means a maximum size of about 72 x 120 inches.
The irony of working this way as an artist is that the collages are typically made from mass produced printed matter that is then reproduced by hand as a unique painted image. To me at least, that is an interesting statement.
For other collage artists this approach might not be interesting or might not be practicable. It took me years to figure out my own methods that would allow me to enjoy the results of making paintings based on my collages. At the beginning it seemed like a crazy idea – make a painting of a collage? Hum… Why not?
Good article. I liked reading about your process and progression. And the whole small to large. Nice!