Meet Cute No. 1

Meet Cute No. 1

30x40 inches

Herringbone patterned Lokta paper, ink-washed 1890s penmanship lesson plans, 1800s ledgers, and astrological charts

$2,800

This collage is from my most recent series called Meet Cute.  It’s a play on classic mid-century modern color form paintings.  But in these collages, both the colors and the papers change where the shapes meet and overlap.  I was exploring the idea of creating a transparent appearance using opaque materials.  

The places where these shapes meet are made from vintage astrological charts.  It’s fun to read these predictions and wonder if they came true.  Apparently, the owner of the charts was going to have an exciting year!

To get these vibrant colors, I paint the antique papers with a wash of ink and water. I’m careful to mix the primary colors together to get secondary colors that match when they overlap. 

I paint a large quantity of papers all at once so that I have a color palette to pull from.  Collages this size require a lot of antique paper, so I end up paying thousands of dollars each year for old pieces of paper.  But they are worth every penny to me.

I like using the same basic colors in all of my collages so that they can be mixed and matched as diptychs and triptychs while staying cohesive.  The combination of Committee Notes and Spelling Practice is an example of a diptych.