Cut and Paste

Here are a couple of new collages in a series I'm currently working on. I was looking at the Jan Tschichold and New Typography book by Christopher Burke and I was really into the look of the artwork for print, as I have mentioned previously the aesthetic really appeals to me. What interests me is the making and putting together of work, the production and the notes for printing etc. The pieced together artwork, it's really beautiful and revealing, but it would have a short life, once used it was stashed back in the planchest and forgotten, its job done.

In today's digital age where the screen presents finished design to us and hides its secrets, I'm becoming more and more interested in the process of making, real live cut and paste!

The Book

This is the artists book I made when I decided I wanted to get back to a more hands on approach and feel to my work. I restricted myself to certain elements, those being letterforms, tape, acetate, pieces of graph paper, some file dividers and various papers I had lying around. I started to hold the initial pieces together and fix them into the book with staples and this became part of the working method and the aesthetic. I was inspired in many ways by the look of 'mechanical artwork', acetate or PMT overlays taped down with the information in black. The book itself was initially the vehicle to contain all of these experiments and exercises but soon started to become an object in its own right as the dividers and the work started to edge out of its constraints. It's a bit of a handful.

More Play With Letterforms

After I had completed the artists book (mentioned last post), I was left with plenty of off-cuts on the desk and floor. I began to work into these again, combining and recycling, photocopying onto coloured papers and then overprinting simple type elements using the inkjet. As the elements were copied again and again they became more beautiful, the 'ageing' and degrading from the copying process adding to the aesthetic. There was a real element of chance to the overprinting as I didn't know where the red lines would fall. This is the way I love to work, just playing and having the freedom to let the work happen, waiting for the stars to align.

The Real Stuff

This is when I began working on the 'real' work. I started simply with letterforms, enlarging them on the photocopier, cutting and combining them to form new shapes, re-copying onto acetate, more cutting and more combining. This is a piece made from a couple of off-cuts during the process of making an artists book, of which I will post images soon.

Last On The Mac

This piece of work was the last that I created using the Mac. OK, the Mac was only used to put it together, the elements existed in their own right, cut from packaging and then scanned in, but I began to be aware that the image only existed digitally, it wasn't real in a sense. I wanted to get back to making 'real' work, images that you could touch, that what you were touching was the only one and not a print of a digital piece.