the impressing power of collage

They hang prominently upon two screws driven deep into the wall to the left of my desk. The afternoon sunlight often shimmers off of them, the drop-forged, 100% stainless-steel 8” scissors. I did not hang them there as art, handsome as they are, nor to be easily accessible. They hang there rather, to be a constant reminder to edit. The scissors are thus double-edged, both tool and symbol. To the right of the desk is Miss January 1979, also a symbol.

In the youthful days of my art, I never gave much consideration towards collage. It seemed like an Arts & Crafts activity. I didn’t think it was beneath me, but my attention was on creating raw and new images. I chased the never-before seen. I would soon learn how such notions that teeter into the naive, sometimes need to be cut out of thinking. Collage very soon became fundamental. My appreciation of it was slow to arrive, but it had really been there in plain view all along.

I gratefully come from a colorful culture of copy and paste, a background world of DIY magazines, ragtag layouts, and surfing stickers. I became attracted to the stacking and layering of images. It was always alluring to look at the door of the walk-in refrigerator of an old bar in the middle of nowhere that was littered with years of stickers, or the falling apart layers of posters peeling, torn and washed by rain, anywhere in New York City. Syphoning such inspiration one night, I took stacks of collected images, from mostly old magazines, car parking stubs, and laundry receipts, and started making a collage. This was a non-assigned experiment.

I had years of saved images to be a reminder of color, tone, or texture. It was specifically the cutting out of the non-interesting parts that was important. By cutting out, I was cutting away the needless. I was editing. I would curate, collate, and put only the best pieces together. Even though it was from recycled images, it was my choices and decisions of placement that made it something new, and never-before seen.

This has given me the greatest satisfaction that I have ever known. I was essentially given a new creative license, or a new lease on spare-time expenditures. It became easy for hours to blur into days, working on images from a collage perspective, to mix disparate things together.

The collage turned out well. I liked it, and took it around town. It was well received. However, it truly turned out well because of what I learned from the process.

I like things that don’t belong together to be together.

Collage taught me juxtaposition.

This new notion informed my painting and even my worldview. It informed my writing, my poetry, my everyday demeanor, how I interact with people, my decision making, how I order coffee and even talk to the mailman. Cut out the needless to highlight the best. At the very least, cut out the nonessential supporting roles. The scissors are tool and symbol. Edit.

We often want to impregnate and stuff our artwork to the beak, like a french goose, as we are such romantic hoarders. We must cut away the clutter, to excavate all of the real gems to juxtapose them together to make a gloriously crystalline piece, whether visual, sonic, or literary. A great quote floating out there is, “Write drunk, edit sober.” I have loved this aphorism for a long time. It is attributed to Hemingway, but he likely never said it. It doesn’t really matter who said it; it’s strong direction. The creation needs the passion, but the cutting out needs the focus. Just like using actual scissors, one should be extremely sharp whilst doing so.

There are the smells wafting from the windows of families cooking across a backyard in Brooklyn. There is a worn striped orange and grey towel, bent, and dried on the corner of a storm door. There is the unmistakable smell of a hurricane, from far off. There is the beauty of a good Stiffkey or Phthalocyanine blue. There’s the Astor Pasture and sitting in the ER with a broken nose and hand. Imagine the fragrance of a lady that walks into a smoke filled room. There’s the sound of track number 10 off of the Chicago II album. There is that sight of sunlight reflecting off of a puddle in the street.

What all is in that last paragraph? Does any of that belong together? To find it, things need to be exhumed and the rest cut out. I’ll enjoy finding it and I’ll make it. It is your calm IN the storm, wildly cutting things up just like the chopping of crest breaks and the waters of the sea, bellowing below. We can all have this passion and it satisfies. This is my love, endless.

In your life, what are you wasting? Is it your time, your energy, or your focus? Are there bad habits like drinking too much and smoking too many cigarettes? Out of life we can edit. We can create art. Some of this nonsense needs to be cut out.

The scissors are the symbol.