Process

A bird usually emerges with a gesture and pose from loose pencil marks in my sketchbook.

Recognizing the gossamer threads of energy and spontaneity from my initial drawing, I am guided to develop the full-fledged character. 

My medium is paper, cut and pasted from a large collection of magazines. It’s a medium that I’m happy to work with being so readily available, benign and abundant. And it’s one that offers a wide commentary of texture. 

This process asks me to slow down.

After the first couple of passes through a small collection of magazines, I stop and turn my attention elsewhere.I wait to see which images filter through and surface to the top of my awareness. Some pages are calling me back.

I use a small pair of scissors. I’ve always liked the satisfying sound of paper being cut under the bite of the scissor blade. It sounds decisive. 

Much time is spent in careful search, selection and arrangement as I find elements of color, texture and graphic detail to use in a new context, not always obscuring their origin. I’m looking to distill a unity of these elements. 

They are used in a mosaic style as I enjoy the unexpected union of fragments sliding into position with unlikely neighbors and the hidden surprise of a pleasing shape only appearing after it has been released from the magazine page.  

It’s exciting to find a landmark piece, it’s in the driver’s seat, taking control. But later in the assembly, no way does that fit. Out it goes, but it served a purpose. Elimination is much a part of the process. 

As my energy changes from one day to another, the pages in front of me change. I notice shape and form that I haven’t seen before but have looked at many times. 

It’s a puzzle to solve, a jigsaw puzzle of pieces once seen, I’m sure of it, but they have now drifted on the tide. The search becomes obsessive at times. Other forces are at work, fairies with a wicked sense of humor, having a giggle at my expense as the one ‘perfect’ piece turns up on the floor in another room, pleasingly announcing itself in isolation. 

Paper possibilities are organized into shallow trays. If a tray takes a tumble off the table, I’m not disappointed as there’s often something that needs to show up at that moment. 

I sweep the floor and it’s easy to hoard many fragments, cuts and curves demand to be saved and included, all offering a potential personal vocabulary of mark making.

Each bird is digitally scanned and optimized for printing.

Watch some of my collage process as I lay down the design for the letter ‘B’.

My B is for Birds of Bodhi, of course.

Inspiration springs from the broad arrangement in composition found in medieval illuminated manuscripts.