Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Deconstructing to build another day




Last summer, I was hell bent on creating a series of "bombs." Some of the collages turned out well. Others? Not so much. While working in the studio, I've been staring at two - "Water Bomb" and "Smoke Bomb"- that never really appealed to me. Bingo! Why not pop them out of their frames, and strip them down to the original backgrounds.

Why? I wanted to keep the backgrounds for another use. They are complex pieces created during a workshop a few years lead by mixed-media artist Jacqueline Sullivan. She had plenty of tricks up her sleeves. I learned a lot, but never seem to set aside the time to work on a new series of backgrounds. So, reclamation work seemed in order.

Luckily, two things made this easy: 1) the backgrounds were sealed before the paper was glued on; 2) PVA was the adhesive, and it is water soluble. Here's how things went on the smokey one ...