Whskr

Collage Workshop Fibre Arts New Zealand Day 1

Starting our exploration, firstly we settle into our work space, met our fellow students and set up ready for our first day’s work Collage with Cordula Kagemann.

The quad at Ad Astra Hostel, Whanganui

It did not take long to set up our tables so everyone had a good space to work. The light-filled art room is used by students at Whanganui Girls College and had everything we needed. Each table had a paint cover and we all made ourselves comfortable and unloaded our materials.

Setting up the room

Cordula introduced herself, and showed samples of her work( brought along in folders) so we knew a bit about her, she then got us started making our first collages.

• Using a very large sheet of A1 size paper we were asked to produce a series of small collages (4/6/9 – it was our choice).
• We were told not to ‘over think’ what we did but select papers and allow our unconscious minds to contribute to our work.
• Even at this early stage there were signs that some were more craft orientated, and some more art focused in how they assembled their work and thought through their ideas..

Whskr First Collage Samples

My first layout using a variety of papers including maps, copies of sheet music, Japanese paper and printed tracing paper.  Many people worked with the paper ‘landscape’ but for some reason I preferred looking at my sheet from the ‘portrait’ orientation.

You can see, I tried for a variety of different shapes, colours and sizes – exploring various options of texture and translucence. Some of the group worked within a more rigid framework, ruling lines to keep each space the same, others worked from a substrate (basic level or surface) of a specific shape. Each sample, as we found out, would be transformed with layers, colours and texture.

Sample work-in-progress

Our first challenge was to glue down the samples created. Challenge? Well, this  meant the papers would have to be moved, which meant we had not to be precious about the design we had made (overthinking?) but to allow a degree of change to come in as we glued each piece down. Sometimes we had to move to reach a second layer  – so how did we put it back? Did we try to keep it exactly the same – or go with the flow and move it a little?

Cordula discusses design elements

After we glued down our collage ideas – using matt medium (Liquitex) we then moved on to consider using a layer of colour.  More on that in my next post.

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