Paper & Paint

where I have work on the walls, and it's for sale

I don’t often feel like a “real” artist. But I do today. Tonight is the opening of my first real art show. I’ve had work hung in galleries here and there as part of group shows, or retrospectives. But it’s been two decades, and the work was art made for other purposes. Comics, illustrations, and so on. This feels different, and I’m rather excited and a wee bit anxious. I’ve got 21 collages that I’ve made since August that will be hanging for four months at Chapterhouse Cafe & Gallery, here in Philadelphia. Since you probably don’t live in Philadelphia, I thought I’d show it to you.

flee, earthlings! 19x29”

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As an illustrator, almost all of my work is for publication. Whether that’s for a children’s book, a magazine, or a poster, I don’t often get the chance, or maybe don’t give myself the chance, to get too deep into work that isn’t for work. Even when I sit down and spend hours drawing in my sketchbook, I’m usually thinking of some current or potential thing that the sketch is presumably going to lead to. A thing that would be collaborative in some way, with an art director and an editor, and limitations, and deadlines. Collages are not that. At least, up to this point they haven’t been. And, up to this point, I’ve liked that.¹

When Shannon, the owner of Chapterhouse, contacted me a little more than a year ago and asked me to hang some work at the cafe, I was thrilled. First, of course, is knowing that someone likes what I do and wants to put it on her walls. But Chapterhouse is a special little place for me. When Sacha and I first started hanging out, we spent a lot of time hanging out at Chapterhouse. We’d set up with our laptops across from each other at one of the small tables, and we’d work. In fact, I wrote a big chunk of Everything Goes at Chapterhouse back in 2008. I’ve bought a lot of prints and art at Chapterhouse shows. Work by Tim Gough and Greg Pizzoli. And we have a framed cat right here in the dining room by Gina Triplett that we bought there. So, yeah. I’m excited about this.

But having this deadline for these collages was new to me. I’ve had a year to make the work, but it’s a lot of work. Shannon asked for “13-17 pieces, and a few more if the work is small.” Several of the collages are small, 5x7 inches or so, so I made 21 in total.

insecte, avec chapeau, 5.25 x 8.25 before frame

Some of the small pieces took just a few hours to make. Others took longer. The giant robot at the top of this post took nearly two weeks. A few months ago I’d planned to make custom frames, from scratch, for every collage. After five frames, I gave that up. To get this done on time, I ended up buying a bunch of commercial frames from Blick Art Supplies. For others, mostly the larger works, I used frames I bought at junk and thrift shops. Here is the giant robot in its frame, and two collages of flowers in salvaged frames as well.²

26 x 36 inches framed. It’s a monster.

flower on white, 8x20 inches

flower on black, 8x20 inches

I’d originally planned the collages to follow a science-fiction theme. Robots and planets and alien things. But I’ve been bug-happy all year as I write my insect stories, so many of the collages feature flies and moths.

I finished work on the last of the 21 collages on Tuesday this week, which was the flower on black, above. Then two days of frames and wire and guessing at prices and making gallery tags. I drove it all over to Chapterhouse yesterday afternoon and left it in a closet for them to hang on the gallery walls last night. Before I packed everything into the Subaru, however, I documented the moment with a video. Here, enjoy.

If you’re in the Philly area, the opening is tonight at 6pm, and the show runs through April.³

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• I wrote a LOT about making collages and my process here back in the fall. Four posts! Here, here, here, and here.

• Here is a tiny (4x6) sketch of that giant robot that I used when I began the collage. I love this drawing almost as much as the collage.

• Speaking of drawing, I have no intention of making another collage until I get to London in May for a weeklong collage workshop. I gotta draw. And write. And I cannot wait to get into the studio on Monday and clean four months of collage detritus off the desks and the floor and the shelves. The place is a disaster.

• Totally unrelated, I recently traded off a couple of older digital cameras and lenses⁴ for a new-to-me Sony full-frame A7Cii. One of the attractions of this camera is that it readily accepts older lenses. I happen to have several old manual-focus lenses, mostly wide-angle primes from the early 80s. They’re nothing special, but they’re a lot of fun to use. They slow me down and make me think about the shot. I shot this photo yesterday just out on the sidewalk, into the sun. I plan to write some more about this in a future Random Orbit issue.

Thanks for reading!

1. Don’t get me wrong. I’d LOVE to make a book or some other illustration using collage. It would have to be different from what I normally do, as collage is a different process with different constraints. But yes. Let’s.

2. I bought this huge wooden frame at a Salvation Army. It was originally about four feet by five feet, but I cut it down and re-mitered the corners for this robot.

3. I hope to have the chance to do this again. And again. Making that giant robot has made me want to go bigger. But how do galleries work? How does one find a gallery, or how does a gallery find an artist? Do you know? If so, get in touch.

4. for the camera nerds: A Fuji X100f that I bought earlier this year to take to France. Fun camera, but the things people love about it, all the film simulations and stuff, are what I ended up not liking. And I’m selling off my 2009 Canon 7D dSLR and the four lenses I used with it. It is big and heavy, and it’s APS-C. I’ve been wanting a full-frame camera for years.