Excavating layers of past work.

31/01/2023 by UKMA 3 Comments

I will share more of this, but I am trying to make sense of the piles of papers I have created over the years, mostly gel prints but not just that. I have stashes of things in multiple places, that are where I stuff experiments, finished pieces that I have no clear purpose for, but also things like images or pages I ripped out of magazines that I thought I might find a us for or I just wanted to save. I have also found a bunch of complete pieces – I have collected up some of these to share, but am not sure how best to use them. I must have had a plan once….

This piece was using a hand-drawn stencil I cut – the left is just a sample and the right is one I liked well enough that I framed it and it’s on my art space wall.

Not sure what my intention was for his piece, but it is might pink, isn’t it? LOL! Hard to see but the central book page is actually mounted above the background, for a more 3D look. I suspect maybe I meant to frame it but never did.

These three were experimental pieces with no real intention for them, then (when I made them) or now! I think the heart was using the gel plate as a stamp, by mounting it on a large hunk of acrylic block – common now, but I had never seen it done back when I made it. I still really like the middle one a lot.

This one is pretty recent, Distress inks and Vaseline resist on tracing paper with a stencil. Love the colours, but it’s backed with heavy mat board so unless I deconstruct it….

This is a piece I love, using a homemade stencil – I think an image from one of my subscription resources. Still use it. Actually it might be both the stencil and a mask? Might have to drag it out to know for sure.

And finally, a pile of recent work – some of the postcards that didn’t make the cut for a recent swap, some background tags and some completed ones, all within the last few months. Destined either for happy mail or swap extras.

While this is by no means all the hoarded stuff, these are the things that I would call closest to being finished items, rather than samples or experiments. I’m kinda thinking the first seven might actually work repurposed to perhaps fill the last few pages in one of my art journals. I have two that really only need a handful of pages in each to be complete. And it might give purpose to them, with the addition of a quote or some text of some kind. The swap/happy mail goodies will get used, no doubt, but some bits could help fill those journals instead, if I prefer.

It’s interesting how much stuff you can amass in 20+ years of arty-farty pursuits. I suspect I could cover the walls of more than one room as if with wallpaper if I wanted to. Hoe nightmare inducing would that be? LOL!