‘Waste Not Want Not’
Nine scrap collages
I don’t know about other collage artists but every time I make collages I brush all of the left over scraps off of my collage table into a zip lock plastic bag instead of the trash can. Over time a lot of scraps accumulate that are too small or not enough of the same material to make a whole collage with. So I end up with a lot of random parts but I don’t want to throw them away so I just keep all of this random material in the plastic bags. I keep a lot of other collage material in plastic bags as well that I have already separated to make collages with. I keep all of the bags of material in large plastic bins and when ready I flip through the various bags and see what I want to make a collage with for the day.
Today I was looking at a couple of these bags packed full of great scrap material, the left overs of previous masterpieces, and decided to open one of these scrap bags and had fun making very little collages that are only 3 x 2 inches in size mounted on 5 x 4 inch 300LB watercolor paper which was just right for the tiny scraps.
Working at the very small scale is a great way to learn how to work quickly and keep the compositions simple due to lack of space. You just can’t get too complicated at 3 x 2 inches at least not in collage making.
You can click on them and see the full sized images. ‘Waste not want not’ as they say.
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These are terrific. Once I bought lots of tiny plastic bags at a flea market. I started to fill them with cut offs from my paper cutter with a plan in mind to fill lots and lots and then have an exhibit of them taped to a wall. Didn’t happen. The exhibit part. I’d send a tiny bag to mail art friends instead.