In pursuit of some original dreams during this Coronavirus-time, I uncover a longing for collage, am reminded of the childlike joy of illustrator Eric Carle, and ponder again Austin Kleon's thoughts on the analog vs the digital desk.
Eric Carle & Collage
For several years recently I helped in a class for middle schoolers on the art of Eric Carle and related illustrators. We called it Eric Carle & Friends: an hour-a-week, in person class for 23 weeks, having a go at the different styles studied with an emphasis on collage.
I arrived there each week through an hour of Boston rush hour traffic, so the quiet act of looking at picture books with pleasant children and helping them glue one thing on another was a tonic.
If you’re not familiar with Eric Carle, he is a prolific children’s book illustrator who works mostly in collage, reknowned especially for The Very Hungry Catepillar (translated comically as The Very Gluttonous Caterpillar in the Spanish-with-subtitles collage class at Domestika.org I’m taking).
Collage is a secret love of mine, an aspiration I rarely attain to—hence the online class to jumpstart the quiet longing for collage in my life. I have over the years endlessly collected my own version of the trappings: stubs, wrappings, maps, paper stuff that gathers on vacations. These I carefully store. I’m ready for any collage eventuality, believe me.
Separate Analog & Digital Space
Years ago as I was setting up this website I was also immersed in Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist. Kleon extols the idea of having separate analog and digital desks, able to deliberately turn from the tyranny of endless digital options, and to leave a physical trace of one’s creative ideas.
Kleon states:
I have two desks in my office—one is ‘analog’ and one is ‘digital.’ The analog desk has nothing but markers, pens, pencils, paper, index cards, and newspaper. Nothing electronic is allowed on that desk. This is where most of my work is born, and all over the desk are physical traces, scraps, and residue from my process. (Unlike a hard drive, paper doesn’t crash.) The digital desk has my laptop, my monitor, my scanner, and my drawing tablet. This is where I edit and publish my work.
As I’ve discovered with using typewriters, I prefer to launch into a process of thought with a physical method of production. But when I first encountered it, this provocative idea of separate desks sat dormant for awhile, waiting for the right season.
It was part of the genesis of this blog, a gathering of analog ideas, albeit with the irony of this digital format.
A Collage Desk
Then three years ago, I worked with artist Michael Nobbs to build a sustainably creative practice while I also suffered from profound illness.
The analog idea sprouted anew and one dream that emerged: to set aside a collage desk. For me, at the time, it would have to be a basement space, also one that could be left messy and encourage creativity.
The desk itself is already there. It used to house the workings of my online used bookselling business. When I chose to close the ‘store’ and concentrate on family matters, that space temporarily languished, waiting for a new dream.
Time for Art/Coronavirus Time
The first pursit of Coronavirus-time has been to dig through the debris of dreams, remind myself of the collage desk goal, and begin to clear our basement space.
I knew I was on my way when my first typewriter, an Olympia SM3, with its luscious burgundy bakelite keys, returned to its proud and intended spot on the cleared off analog/collage desk in the basement.
The next revelation was that I didn’t have to finish the whole basement space perfectly before being able to enjoy the desk. That was freeing. So I enrolled in the delightful class at Domestika, Story Illustration with Paper, and am enjoying the videos and projects, Spanish/English translation glitches and all.
Back to Eric Carle
Each class at Domestika is taught by a practicing professional and they always begin with an overview of their influences. I was delighted that instructor Estrellita Caracol cited Carle as an influence and linked to material of his I had not yet seen and reminding me of all I’d loved about the collage class I’d helped teach.
Part of Eric Carle’s charm to me is his childlike joy as he creates his collages of painted tissue paper. We emulated this technique in the middle school class I mentioned, painting on our papers, but not on tissue. Wet tissue is tricky to handle en masse!
Some of the videos we watched in class are below.
Carle’s tools of choice are scalpel and tweezers. Drawing an idea on white paper, he places that over the prepainted, dry sheet of tissue he’s chosen, then slices through both layers, around his pencil drawing on the white, through to the tissue beneath.
With careful tweezers he then places the small piece on the final image, that spot already wet with glue. It’s a painstaking technique, building up the image piece by piece, assembling so precisely a joyful chaos and sometimes cacophony of shape, texture and color, readable by any child and by the child lucky enough to remain in any adult.
“a joyful chaos of shape, texture and color,
readable by any child
and by the child lucky enough to remain in any adult.”
The Magic Space Waiting
As I work on my collaged self-portrait, with Eric Carle’s joy in mind, the rest of the basement faces a final tidy up as one of my adult children needs to store things at home for the summer. Hey ho. Behind the fresh temporary piles will lurk the magic collage space, one secret weapon in the tidal pull of family life and family things. A few selected pieces of useless debris made meaningful and even beautiful in the exciting art of collage.
How About You?
It’s a roundabout journey, isn’t it? What is an art goal you’ve been putting off? Does the idea of an analog space with room to avoid the digital pull appeal to you?