Postcard Collages

My several month infatuation with making collages has manifested itself in various ways.  Recently, I've been making small collages on old postcards. I collect tacky postcards, which I describe as postcards that are kitschy, ugly, in bad taste, or boring. Over the past few months, I've bought large lots of old postcards on Ebay, hoping to find both tacky cards, and some specific types of cards for another project I'm working on (more on that in a future post).

When I buy stacks of unseen postcards online, I tend to end up with a bunch that just aren't boring or tacky enough, or that won't work for my other project. These had been accumulating in my studio for a while, so I decided to start making collages on them.

The first few I made were all from a stack of postcards originally bought at a now defunct Chinese-themed amusement park in Florida. I was envisioning a series of Chinese postcard collages, but that idea ran out of steam pretty quickly, as I acquired more cards, and started developing other ideas and interests.

The collages you're viewing here are all made on the Chinese postcards, and were completed between April and June of this year. I'll post some more recent ones soon.

Yes, It's More Collages!

Here's a few more of the collages I've been working on this summer. I love this first one, I threw it together in about ten minutes right before bed a few weeks ago, and think it turned out good.

I've explored these themes a lot in the past, but the simplicity of this collage is new. 

This collage was made pretty spontaneously. The smoky or cloudy photo with the hand cut out was about to go into the recycling when I realized it looked interesting. From that thought to finished collage was about five minutes.

Mmmmmmm, this ones's ok, I guess.  It sat unglued for several weeks in my studio while I decided whether or not it needed something else added, but every time I tried it looked bad, so I finally called it done and glued the figures down to the photo. The figures were leftover from an illustration in an old schoolbook. I needed the background for this collage. I shot the photo behind the figures in Amsterdam in 2007.

The Summer Of Collage

This has apparently been the summer of collage for me. The majority of my studio work this summer has been spent making some sort of collage.  Here are a few more recent ones.

These are all a month or so old. Between traveling and preparing for the upcoming fall semester, my studio production has slowed down. I'm getting the itch to work on collages again, however, so I may be posting more here soon.