THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE NASHVILLE COLLAGE COLLECTIVE by Cat Acree First there was San Francisco in 2006, then New York in 2008, followed by Nashville in 2010, as each city became a hub for a Collage Collective, loosely knit groups of artists who come together to create collages and montage works. But at the heart of the Nashville Collage Collective is the founding foursome who call themselves the Four Corners: Lisa Haddad, Randy L Purcell, Eva Sochorova, and robert bruce scott. Artwork by the Four Corners is unlike any collage you’re likely to come across. The San Francisco, New York, and Nashville Collage Collectives (the latter boasting more than 40 participating artists who meet monthly at Turnip Green Creative Reuse) are “just groups of people,” Haddad explains. They’re not all collaborators, but are casual, democratic participators who typically practice what Haddad calls “pure collage,” sticking to traditional materials of paper and glue. But on a rainy July afternoon, the first day in nearly six months that the Four Corners have met together, they chime in all at once to explain that their collaborative works are mixed media, with the especially unusual premise of having passed into each artist’s hands at least one time, if not more. Indeed, talking with the Four Corners about their work is an experience as familiar and overlapping as one of their finished pieces. They’ve been working together since 2010, and their seven-year collaboration has grown into a mixture of familial (almost sibling-like) intimacy and a bubbling, brewing creative flow. All are full-time artists with disparate styles. Mixed-media painter Haddad first brought them all together after attending a collage workshop, and she has a tendency to rummage through the room, pointing out boxes of scrap material and finished and unfinished art worth noting. Purcell, who works with encaustic wax in his own work, often finishes the others’ sentences when they drift off the tail end of a thought. Abstract painter Sochorova, with her warm German accent, is known as the free-flowing one but proudly refers to herself as “the destroyer.” Sculptor scott, who is the only one with a background in collaboration, has a slight whistle in his “s” and a steady, unassuming gaze, and his soft voice tends to disappear just beneath the sound of the others. All different, all distinct, but when it comes to collage, each artist is liberated—they’re encouraged to play, explore, or try out something completely different. “I think each of us is a mentor and a student,” Haddad says. “As soon as you put something on [the canvas]—which, by the way, you feel very free to do because you’re not finishing something—you can step out of your style, you can do something crazy.” “It’s a reactive artwork,” Purcell says. “We react to each other’s pieces or strokes or whatever it is that we add to the piece. It’s constantly changing.” There’s no such thing as a blank canvas here. Each artist brings in found objects, scraps (often taken from and shared with the Nashville Collage Collective) or one of their own works that needs a new eye. And then it’s passed around the circle, from artist to artist, until it returns to the original owner. At the beginning of their collaboration, the four would assemble and discuss changes throughout the process. But like finishing each other’s sentences, the cyclical process has become more and more intuitive, the intimacy of the rotation more comfortable. Now, individual changes disappear into the work. Feelings might get a little hurt when favorite marks are covered up, but even this is met with understanding, as the mutual respect of the process runs deep. Purcell may spill coffee on a big sheet of paper; Sochorova may cut it up. Sochorova covers a painting with blue stripes; Purcell reorients the entire piece by 45 degrees—and then someone added triangles (“My triangles,” scott says, barely audible), and thus House of the Rising Moon comes together. The chopped-up (thanks to Purcell) There’s a Lot Going on and I’m Not Even There speaks for itself. Even to the viewer, the diverse textures and unexpected layers of these pieces beg to be touched. Choosing an ending point is clearly one of the hardest things for the group, and scott describes each artwork as having four endings, and therefore four beginnings. At each work’s end—whatever that end— there’s no one voice. Purcell calls it a conversation. scott calls it “rejoice.” Sochorova calls it “communion.” An awareness of what community is, of what people can do when they work together.” For the Four Corners, the time has come to start fresh—always endings, always beginnings. Each Corner will keep the piece or two they love most, and all other collages will be auctioned at Turnip Green Creative Reuse’s gallery in an online silent auction that will be preceded by an opening reception on September 9. “We all have a humble side where we want to learn more and want to get better and try something new,” Haddad says. “And that makes it possible to keep going.” “We react to each other’s pieces or strokes or whatever it is that we add to the piece. It’s constantly changing.” The Four Corners Retrospective and Monthlong Auction opens during the East Side Art Stumble on September 9 at the Green Gallery, Turnip Green Creative Reuse. For more information, visit www.thefourcornersart.com. |
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We've been busy! It's exciting to know we are going to share our work again in the near future. It seems we work a little harder than normal when a show in on the horizon. Lisa posted the dates and locations of our two new shows. You can find them on the home page. To the left is one of many collaborations we've been working. I've really enjoyed watching the progress of our collaborations. After working together for a few years, the four of us have really become more comfortable adding our own flavor to each piece. It's not always easy, but it's getting easier. The main thing is that we have fun and we grow as artist. Pushing our limits with media and with each other. We'll try and share more images soon. Make sure and save the dates for our shows. You won't want to miss it! RLP I don't want to jump the gun here, or put the cart before the horse, but I think that the Collective has teamed up with a winner in Kelly Tipler and Turnip Green. I am hoping that great things will come from our having met and our plans to work together.
Our group has begun work again. We are back in the studio and it feels GREAT! Took a while to get us together, but now that we are I believe that we will be able to make a great start towards the promising Spring and Summer we have. Projects are dead-ahead. So, "Damn the torpedoes..."! I want to thank the other members of the Nashville Collage Collective, Eva, Lisa, and Randy, for their support over the past year. We are lucky to have each other for lots of reasons. Motivation! How do you get motivated when you are not a member of a collective?!!! I need everybody to help here and throw some ideas out there. Artists are floundering and we need to throw them a lifeline! It helps to have peers to rely on for motivation and support. When you don't have that, though, it can be hard. I know. Inspiration can be found almost anywhere, however, if one approaches everything with an open mind and heart. Pick one thing today. Just one single thing. Something you see, or something you hear, and take it in... really TAKE IT IN. This will be your inspiration for the next BIG thing that you do. It sounds simple. It's not. We are inundated with crap all the time, literally. But, if you can single one thing out and focus, you will have something to provide you endless hours of enjoyment. Draw it. Paint it. Copy it. Sculpt it. Write it. Rhyme it. Rehearse it. Move to it. Dance with it. Sing it. It's easy to say, I know, I know.... Depression is a BITCH! If you do pick just one little thing, though, you might feel a little better. Creation begins in the mind. Let it be free. The Collective has begun work and will hopefully be posting photos soon of new works in progress. Lisa held her collage party and it was a great success. Look forward to more. Eva is in town. Randy is in a great frame of mind and ready to rumble. And, I am actually beginning to work again. yay. Stop. Look. Listen. rb It's easy to get stuck. Stuck thinking about the same things. Stuck looking at the same things. Stuck listening to the same things. Stuck believing the same things. Stuck creating the same things. Do you feel stuck?
Our Collective is very process-oriented, I believe. The previous post may have been a little too personal, but in writing about myself, I started to think about what we are doing as a group here. We are taking an idea and hurling it into the wind. (Actually the 4 of us, individually, are.) We are trusting totally in the process of the art we are creating. It doesn't really matter what comes out at the end. We are growing as people by working together. We are growing as artists by creating together. Our work is maturing as we re-invent it. We are all about taking the smallest bit of something, the tiniest scrap, and making the biggest impression we can on the hearts and minds of those who look at it forever after. When we begin something new, we are taking the first step of a journey that has no real end. Maybe that's why it's so hard to take that first step sometimes. The members of the Collective here sometimes have difficulties getting rolling. We joke and encourage each other, but we all know that feeling, and it is with a bit of a twist in our stomach that we crack wise. We work towards something that we can't see. we can't see it because it's the vision of 4 people. That's one of the beauties of our group and of our work. The process IS the art. The working together is the point. We will work here. Work on new things. Our vision will be focused forwards. We will always recycle, though. The creative process will buoy us and the wind will carry us downstream and our creations will shine. I know they will. Our ideas are our histories and our histories become the fodder for our ideas. We will perform the rituals which we have been developing and we will create something new and beautiful and glorious for all to see (at least to us). We will become. The process will allow us to. The object isn't the object. Anybody can make a collage. Not everybody can make a great collage. Even fewer can tie themselves to 3 other people and make a great collage. HA! We will all 4 try. We will follow the path that we are starting to wear on the studio carpet. We will perform our individual rituals and we will come together. We will create and become UN-STUCK! We will create!!! rbs Hi. I think I've given everyone enough time now to read my earlier entries from quite a while back and catch up a bit. I've changed. Some of the words will stay the same, but perspective, like the weather, is unpredictable. No matter what the girl at 10:00 tells you. So, let my words rain down....
I was in the shower this morning and I suddenly realized something that should have been obvious to me years ago. (Don't worry here....) I didn't care if I was clean or not when I got out. What a shower is to me is a morning ritual. A familiar thing that is revisited again and again, but caring and lovingly each time. The same way. From folding my clothes and placing them in the clothes basket to drying my hands after conditioning my hair, it's all a play which is acted out on my own private stage. I have found out, finally, what and why I do. I am a process-oriented person and, therefore, a process-oriented artist. Since I believe my personage to be inseparable from my creative consciousness, or subconsciousness, or whatever, it is the conception and creation which is important to me, in my life and my art. Does anybody feel the same way here? Think about it for a while and let me know, or let yourself know, whether you are a process-oriented artist, or an object-oriented artist. Are you an object maker? Or, are you a maker of objects? Is the thrill at the beginning or the end? I know now why I have sooooo many boxes full of STUFF. I know why I collect things, why I scavenge. It is stalking that gives me joy. The reason I have to create (and I do HAVE TO), is because I have to follow the ritual of birth. The birth of something new. Go way back. Back to the seemingly harmless idea that you want to make something. The crescendo actually begins there for me. When I wake up, I need to follow a pattern of courtship with what is to be my day. It's a dance. It's what I do. I know that today. I know that now. Self-realization. Boring to you, because I'm talking about me. Write! Talk about you! Send me something which describes the way you feel, the way you work. I don't know if I should be embarrassed or ashamed to say that my artwork is gathering dust. It's the PROCESS that I crave. My art, well, most of it, isn't on my walls, or even in my house. It's shut away because after I give life to something, all I can do is set it free. That's the only option for me. Sure, my pieces are important to me, and I visit them as individual expressions of myself, (I exhibit and keep close to my heart and mind's babies), but it is not the finished pieces that I find the most pleasure in. I give that away to the viewers. My joy, and it is pure joy, is finding something somewhere, whether it's an actual thing or an idea, and seeing that light click on in my head. That feeling of knowing that something is going to be made of that. THE HUNT IS ON! THE RACE BEGUN! Now I can fill my days with all the things that go along with creation. Now I can be free to be swept away in the rituals, the beginning, the middle, and ultimately, almost, almost, the end. The end I turn away from. I will write about the end another time. Please let me know if I strike a chord. I want to talk with someone. I want you to talk to each other. I want this to be a place where ideas are presented and explored. A place full of life. So, write! And, DO GOOD WORK! later. rb Boy HOWDY.
It's been a long time, my friends. I'm rusty and it's going to take a while to shake the cobwebs from my mind and the dust from my neglected keyboard. I'm sorry you've been in the dark about what the Collage Collective here in Nashville has been up to. There really hasn't been much of a loop to have been included in, however. The Summer was almost SILENT as Eva was jet-setting back and forth to NYC, Lisa was busy with family, Randy was on other projects, and I was trying to work my way through some personal issues and shake off a horrible, horrible BLOCK which I had for nearly the entire year. We have finally come together again this Autumn / Winter and we are ready to embark upon a new and fantastic journey, a part of which you will be included on if you just follow my words in the early morning flickering of your dying candle. This is going to be an interesting flight, so buckle up. WELCOME BACK! The Nashville Collage Collective is back at work, in the studio, taking off in a new direction. We have some excellent opportunities which we mean to take full advantage of this coming year. We are going to be working towards some exhibitions later on and I invite you to follow my words and our progress as we diligently pursue our ARTISTIC VISION! This is your invitation. I will wrack my addled brain for some interesting topics to discuss here and will keep you abreast of the Collective's progress. We are excited, and I am nervous. Please bear with me as I try to get into the swing of things again. WATCH US AS WE SOAR INTO THIS WONDERFUL NEW YEAR!!! All for now ---- robert bruce DO GOOD WORK I am going to throw a word out there and sit back and see what happens. Advice, opinions, and practices are all welcome. I know that every artist struggles with this, so a discussion could be very helpful.
The word is "PRICING". So, here we go! rbs It's been much too long since we have posted or replied. I've got to find a way to kickstart these discussions.
Here's one for consideration: How much does your subconsciousness play a role in what you create? Do you remember your dreams, daytime or nighttime? Does an interpretation of what you have seen in your mind work it's way into your art? I'm not talking about the technical side, i.e. planning or "sketching" in your mind or actively thinking about materials or techniques. What I'm asking about are things like symbolism, or narratives, or "dreams" that a psychic would have a field-day with. Things that if you told someone about, they might suggest you go to therapy. I use references often that I have not actively thought about during waking hours. I also think about ideas that I have absolutely no clue where they came from. I can only guess that my mind works on a different creative level sometimes. Meanings in my work are sometimes unfamiliar to me. Sometimes I am clueless about where an idea or link among elements within a work has come from. Sometimes even, a viewer can point something out which then seems obvious to me but which I was blind to before. Sometimes this is good, sometimes bad. If I can trace the origin of an idea back to the start, it's way cool. But sometimes that is not possible for me to do. I take great pride in being able to effectively create a vignette or to tell a short story with a work. I don't know if these things come to me in broken pieces from bits held tightly in my head or if I actively "make-up" the story as I go. I definitely think that my own subconsciousness plays a big part in what I do. Admitting this, I hope, will not be detrimental to the perception of me as a person nor an artist. I'm just trying to find out where things come from. Of course I don't always do this, this day and night dreaming. I rarely even remember my dreams. But I think that somehow, ideas are remembered and trapped and then percolate to be reborn as my art. Does anyone else have any ideas about this? I'm hanging by a thread on this one.... rbs ok. I think we've decided, as a small group not necessarily representative of the art community at large, that a work of art is finished when the artist says it's finished. And that's final. Unless, of course, that artist is me; never satisfied, and willing to risk destroying a perfectly good piece by meddling with the "finished" product. Trust your gut! I don't really understand the thought processes of my own mind. There are some pretty serious reasons for this, I am told, that I won't go into here. This is about art and artists and not my mental state. But, I digress. The work is done. Now, what do you call it? How do you come up with a title? Titles are extremely important to my way of thinking and working. They can often make or break a piece. Once again, I can only offer my own opinion until someone chimes in. I have two methods of titling a new piece. I can either start with a title before I actually begin work and move towards the idea. Or, I can wait, sometimes a long time, after the work is finished and try to find something that fits the idea that I am trying to convey. I'm not including dartboards and drawings from hats for the sake of those stymied by the loose system which is my way occasionally. I do collect titles. I have a notebook full. It's fun to me to see what I have accumulated sometimes and wonder just what the hell was I thinking. Titles can be descriptive (often boring). TItles can be cutesy (saccharine and trite). TItles can be mysterious and enigmatic (more my style). Titles can be an actual part of the piece as a whole (right on). Something that I often do is to use the title as an actual element in the understanding of the piece. I like to play with words and humor is important to me so I sometimes am simply trying to make someone laugh in order to make a connection with the piece. I want to backtrack a little and say that a descriptive title can be used for good. "Use the Force Luke!" If it tells a story and traces the path of the work, I can find it useful. But not all titles are helpful. I enjoy looking at a work before looking at the title often. Making a visual connection before being told what it is, or what it means, or where it's going is much more important I think than "selling" the piece with staid facts. Titling a work can be very difficult and I would like to stop here and let someone else try to explain their own thought processes behind the words which can hide a work or bring it into the light. What do you think guys?
rbs From the first responses, I am starting to get the feeling that this is a very subjective topic. It seems that a piece of artwork is "finished" when the artist is happy with the results, out of ideas to "improve" it, and/or feels that the viewing public will get her point or at least have some sort of reaction to it. Speaking only for myself and from my own experience I can say that I am almost never happy with the results of my labors. So I can strike that one. Maybe I have perfectionist tendencies. Or, maybe I am too hard on myself and just don't trust my abilities. Whatever the root cause, I have a very difficult time presenting my work to others in any type of setting because all I can see are the faults and to me that indicates an "Unfinished" piece. If I take the approach that all work is unfinished, then I guess that I could squeak by, but I wouldn't be being honest with myself. I will take the faulty approach here and say that, "I should finish the work that I start and be more confident." Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Some things are easy to say. Idea number two again suggests that the artist's temperament and creative inclination will suggest a clear path to the conclusion of a piece. Improving a piece (or meddling as I called it before) has always had more negative results than positive additions in my experience. I must admit here that I don't often work with a clear path in mind. I don't sketch or entirely plan a piece. I allow intuition and subconscious thought to direct me a lot of the time. It will of course be more difficult, working that way I believe, to tell when any particular piece is done. For an artist who does plan and have a distinct direction in mind, I think that once the concept properly prepared is realized, a piece is "done". This seems like a logical and correct assumption. However, I know artists who erase part of their original plan to fit a change made while a piece is in progress. Allowing for change is certainly the artist's prerogative but then, once again, how is the finality of the work discerned? Idea number three? Some people get more meaning and find more inspiration from the work of the Minimalists than from the paintings in the Sistine Chapel. Does a sense of understanding, peace, or realization found by a viewer give the artist the validation that he has been successful and has, in fact, finished a particular piece? I don't know. I don't know that I can know. I love the simplicity, but still respect the complex. Is a two inch line drawn on a museum wall a finished piece? (I believe so!) If one creates something and causes a viewer to have a reaction to it, good, bad, or ugly, I think that a work might be considered "finished". If the viewer thinks that it might be improved by a knife slash, or the quick scribble of an ink pen, so be it. I might, in some cases, agree. I have been frustrated when looking at a piece before thinking that a painting or sculpture "needs" something. Just that feeling, though, may be what the artist was going for. So can it be true that a work is finished when the artist says so. I am starting to think yes. And damn the torpedoes. --- rbs
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AuthorThese posts could be from any of the Collage Collective. We try to post things important to us and our work. We haven't really promoted this page, but if you would like to join the discussion please do so. thanks for coming by. RLP. Archives
September 2017
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