Final thoughts before the Final

Jenny and I have been doing a number of collage pieces since the beginning of March. Jenny attended the Art and Soul Retreat in Portland with her mom, her friend Mara, my sister Libby and Scout. (Libby Generously volunteered to watch Scout while Jenny was in her classes.) While there she picked up a lot of interesting techniques for collage and we tried putting some of them to use by compiling an inventory of found images, bits of paper from the recycling bin and odd scrapes found here and there. We made a couple of dozen, then Jenny started to record them digitally. It was during this process that she realized we could print out our collages, cut up the printed image and use it again as further collage fodder.

I have been reading about this artist Ross Bleckner. Bleckner began to camp another art style known as Op art. Op art, also known as optical art, is a genre of visual art, especially painting, that makes use of optical illusions, and I have been reading about it in preparation for my final review. Bleckner sublimates op arts strict geormetry opting for blurred lines that allows the viewer to see Bleckner’s use of abstract patterns, which, while still strikingly optical, create images that are simultaneously playful and still resonate in bold relation with lyrical, living forms.

I saw an immediate relation between the stripes of collage paper that we had made from digital images of other collages and the camp of Bleckners work. For one thing, the image of the former collage is still resident in that latter work, but is distorted and reformed, creating a new, potentially more vibrant work, which seems to camp both op art and Bleckner and poke fun at other media of art like collage or scrap booking that fine artist would typically disdain.

Fine artist hate the idea of art as decoration, or more precisely, decoration for decorations sake, because of the idea of formalism in art, namely In visual art, formalism is the concept that everything necessary in a work of art is contained within it. The context for the work, including the reason for its creation, the historical background, and the life of the artist, is considered to be of secondary importance. However in order to talk about art, unless you are indoctrinated into the language of art, like a wine connoisseur who knows wine, it is difficult for people to connect with art without context. They see line, texture, rhythm, but are unaccustomed to talking about art and might feel intimidated and unsure how to use these terms, None the less people know what they like and know what they dislike and unless abstract painting can insert itself into the world of public discourse, it remains caught in the cul-de-sac of late formalism.

For myself I see a connection between the optical illusion of the floating pipes and the deconstruction of the collage image to form a new image. Looking at these collages is like looking at op art, trying to discern the image within the image, while remaining lighthearted and playful.