December 2021: New Work

A Town Called Garbanzo
16" x 20"
painted and found papers collage

The thing about making artwork for me is that every now and then, I have a convergence of unlikely ideas. Those seemingly disparate ideas then come together in what I can only describe as a Frankenstein like fusion of collage: different parts from different places to form some sort of cohesive body.

This is what I mean. A month or so ago I had a bizarre kind of dream. It was so strange in fact that when I woke up I got out of bed and wrote it all down. In my dream I was lost and asking for directions. I was told by a group of people that I was in a town called Garbanzo. Right... sure, no problem. There was more that happened in the dream but it was this town name that started a kernel of thinking.

Fast forward to about a week later. I was driving to an appointment in Sacramento. Prior to leaving, I had looked up and written down the instructions for how to get to where I was going. (I loaded them into my phone too for real time navigation.) No lie, the driving directions said to take highway 99 to the Elvas freeway. (This is what is known locally as bus. loop 80 or the Cap. City Freeway.) Well, that just made me laugh and of course it became the Elvis freeway, in my mind. When I reached my destination, right away I pulled out pen and paper and wrote the following, "Take The Elvis Freeway To a Town Called Garbanzo." And that's the show, folks!

I have thought a lot over the years that creativity is simply a matter of x + y= z. Two unrelated things when added together somehow make a third unrelated, new thing. I feel this way on some level each time I start a collage. I have no idea how the materials in front of me will fit together, if at all. And it isn't often that I have a title all selected in the beginning as with the above piece. It's much more likely that I am looking in my pile of stuff and stitching things together. Those things all sort of go together, bound with one another through color or shape or line but it isn't obvious until I get going. I know I will have a collage in the end but what it is going to look like? I have no idea.

This is probably it for me for December. Not a fast worker I guess! Please drop me an email if you have a comment.
libbyfife@ymail.com
Thanks for reading,
​Libby


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