I have close to a dozen, now, collage journals where I play with color and form.  I think they started as wish-books — a place to put images of things I wanted.  But soon & invariably, they became something else — I couldn’t help cutting, rearranging, interrupting an image… Occasionally I drift into social commentary, but mostly it is pure play.

I’ve decided to post a few now and then.  I am choosing not to worry about copyright.  My love of textiles will be obvious.  That I am attending to color might be clear.  My obsession with house motifs and doorways will be apparent, too.

Most images come from catalogs and old magazines — a boxload of old Smithsonians, National Geographic, and some designer magazines (Living, House Beautiful, Country Living) … I have three whole books devoted to Christmas.

So Collage Page #1 features —

• Venice bridge arches
• country doorways
• bucket of wood
• Alicia Silverstone’s  hand and knee creases
• feet of a J. Jill model
• flowers and I don’t know what those blue disks are.

Here I am looking at a very soft palette.  This at odds with the colors I generally choose in quiltmaking, which tend to be very saturated colors.

There is an intentional social comment here, about the commercialization of beauty and the price it exacts from women.  We fall prey to the glossy images and are invited to view ourselves in bits and pieces (e.g. “I like my breasts, but I hate my ass” ).  The desire for something ELSE, something deeper than the skin, is referenced by those bridges and doors, which represent transport, openings, mystery….

Not that I wouldn’t like to own that J.Jill skirt, mind…