Big and Little, an Intuitive Collage Workshop with Crystal Neubauer

Big and Little, An Intuitive Collage Workshop

Crystal Neubauer

For three days I traveled to Racine, WI, to attend the Big and Little, An Intuitive Collage Workshop taught by Crystal Neubauer in her studio in the 16th Street artist hive.

The basic concept of this workshop is that we would start out making collages on 4" x 4" substrates and work our way up to something bigger.

Crystal

Class Samples (Big!)

Crystal's art hangs in the studio for inspiration

My workspace for three days. My table mate was my art buddy, Karen Robison.

 The temptress also displays all the treasures that go into making these big collages.

For exercise purposes we made a series of 4" x 4" collages.

We progressively got bigger in our efforts, mine being 9" x 12".

As an exercise, we were asked to find inspiration in the 16th Street building to foster our large collage. These are the pictures I took for possible collages.

Below is my first attempt to use a photo to promote a collage.

 

I feel like this collage comes up way short. It took me awhile to figure out that my job was not to make a collage-photograph of the photograph.

Below is the photo that inspired my big collage followed by my 9" x 12" exercise to get ready. 

Artistically, I think this effort was more in the direction I should be going. I need to free my photographer's brain and get more representational.

I decided that 30" x 40" was just too big, so I cut my canvas to 20" x 30".

For me, whether doing collage or assemblage, every thing gets better when I nail something to the canvas and force myself to get going.

So below you will see what the collage looked like when I brought it home.

Collages really transform for me when I can add a little tint to the works.

I needed to cut a base for the collage out of plywood

On the right I added this wood trim

On the right I added some tape measure business

I added some planets to create some motion in the piece

The original inspiration for this piece

And so we have...Astrology is the Clock of Destiny.