Assemblages are collages that are made by assembling disparate elements, often everyday objects. Someone gave me a piece of a piano, a piece that had all these gorgeous piano hammers. One sunny day, I took the whole thing apart...
I sorted all the pieces, washed them in bleach and lay them all out on the deck to dry in the sun. All the pieces were then sorted and stored in boxes. Those boxes were carried around with me, in my mind, for several weeks while I contemplated what to do with them. While I mentally carried them, things I saw, things I read, things I dreamed, all melded together into a fuzzy idea for using them. One day I took them out, explored the shapes and how they would fit together. I created a big mould like a pile of pickup sticks, exploring the relationships. Finally things started to happen...
Piano Angel 2020 (9 x 9 x 5 inches) $75
This ‘piano angel’ was born. It didn’t ‘just happen’. It was not a eureka moment. I was not just playing around and ‘out it popped’. Imagine you are a student, and you have a paper to write, it is due in 3 weeks. You attend lectures, read books, watch videos and talk to people. You get a sense of things coming together and spend a lot of time appearing to stare into space as you mull all the ideas over. You spend lots of mental energy thinking about the connections between ideas, looking for the big picture and what your statement will be about the topic and finally, the night before it is due, it all forms a solid, unified idea and you madly write it up for submission. As an artist, I often have to create my own ‘deadline’ and work through the same processes. Having a show, or an event, is exciting because it provides me with a deadline. Self-discipline can be hard at times.
Want to know more about assemblage artists? Check out; Jospeh Cornell, Robert Rauschenberg, John Chamberlain and Greg Colson.
