Countdown to Deadline

For the last few years I have contributed a parcel of small collages to Dale Copeland’s International Collage Exchange – http://outofsight.co.nz/Bakers/default.htm - and had the very great pleasure of getting a lovely mixed bag of pieces back, made by artists from all over the word. It truly has become an annual celebration for me, as much fun (or more) than birthdays and Christmas. This year I began early on by selecting from the postcard pile that I have been working on since last winter, relying on my instincts to pull out the group that I could develop into a related series. For some reason, the linking factor was colour, a hot pink, which wasn’t the most helpful starting point, but I decided to stick with it.

The next pivotal ‘found’ piece was a full page ad in a local weekly current affairs magazine that Sky TV were running to encourage sign ups to their Arts Channel. The ad was based around Jackson Pollock, and it resonated with the Diploma studies we did last year, and reminded me of the changes that the study had brought to my own work. So, with various ripped and glued random pieces the cards began to grow, usually in the evenings when the mundane stuff of the day was beyond worrying about and my mind was free to just zone out and let the ‘maker’ in me free to work. It seems a mindless process at times, with little conscious effort, yet I find myself waking in the early hours with a clear idea directly related to whatever is on the coffee table mere feet away, sometimes a phrase, sometimes a line of thought. This time I woke with the series title, ready made – these collages were going to be ‘A Load of Old Pollocks’.

So now they are three quarters done, and I am gathering cliches, the ultimate ‘old bollocks’, to apply to each as text to pull the disparate magpie gathered images together. As I need at least thirteen of these and I have less than a week till deadline I am deliciously focused just now. It is a joyful creative release to hold onto amid the stressful unavoidable family life stuff we all contend with at times.

Thank heavens for deadlines.

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