Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

Plant life. Photo by Sanna Wright, September 2018.

I took this first photo on the WSU campus. The white leaves caught my attention as I was walking home from class. In the photo, there are many contrasting textures. First, there is the grainy cut leaves with frayed damaged edges, contrasting with the rough plant stems and the smooth red berries. Next the pokey physical texture of the sticks in the dirt.The dried corse leaf contrasts with silky spider webs and smooth concrete pavement. There is a soft uniform appearance to the plants. The colors contrast, the red from the berries sits directly across the color wheel from the sharp green of the leaves. The white scratches on the largest leaves draws attention to the rough dry texture.

The corner of a painting has a rough frayed texture. Photo by Sanna Wright, September 2018

In this photo of a screen painting in my house, you can see the frayed damaged edges, as well as the fibers of the cloth the canvas is made out of. This physical texture contrasts with the surface behind it, which is a smooth wall. The stapple’s smooth reflective texture contrasts with the bumpy grainy texture of the screen painting.

Eugenia Loli worked as a computer programmer and technical journalist before she left the field to pursue art. Her collages combine cutouts from science fiction books and vintage magazines. The artist leaves her collages to the viewer’s interpretation but attempts to depict narrative scenes, encouraging views to create a plot. In this particular image, the artist makes specific stylistic choices that create a unique composition.

One of Eugenia Loli’s surreal collages taken from an April 2015 article by Sara Barnes for My Modern Met https://mymodernmet.com/eugenia-loli-collages

Visual texture is created with the moon in the background and, in turn, this texture is contrasted with the smooth, soft looking texture of the woman’s skin. Direction is created in the photo as line is used within black and white columns to create direction. The cone opening toward the top right center of the collage balances with the woman in the bottom left corner and the flowers in the bottom right corner. These three points of interest reinforce the vertical direction of the image. Further, harmony is made as the woman’s bathing suit, the flowers, and the sky as all contain a coordinating color scheme. Harmony is made once more with the green plants, the green landscape, and the green galaxy pattern in the stars. Value is created as these is light to dark contrast in both the top and bottom of the frame. Dominance given to sculpture in the middle as it is pasted on top of background, but this dominance is partially taken away with the dark shadow effect on the sculpture and the woman on a rock in the foreground. In this, the woman in the foreground establishes dominance as the subject of the photo. Things with life in the photo, woman, plants, and birds, have bright pink and yellow coloring. I believe that the author is working with ideas of life in her image as nearly all the aspects of the photo signify movement and growth. Because the author leaves her work somewhat open ended, I chose to take this image as alluding to the idea that life is all around us: though some life is plain to see, as the woman, flowers, and birds other forms are curious and unknown as that of space and seemingly concrete landscapes.

For this blog post, I chose to research the work and style of Eugenia Loli. During my search for this assignment, I found myself quite interested in all the different styles of collages done by the artists. They all have a similar theme, using forties and fifties through the present, yet each express different talents and methods by the artist. Loli is considered a contemporary artist and uses digital media and tools to craft up her pieces. Being a contemporary artist, Loli is able to continue to bring the collage to her work, just with different tools. Throughout Loli’s work, she incorporates iconic art from the fifties while using digital editing programs to create that contemporary twist to her artwork.

Time has definitely changed from when collages were being created as far

This collage demonstrates Loli’s use of science fiction along with merging it with art from the fifties. Since digital editing programs were used to create this, it would be considered a “contemporary approach” (“Stars for Breakfast” by Eugenia Loli, https://cargocollective.com/eugenialoli/)

back as Picasso. Now, in the twenty-first century, we have the accessibility to computers, tablets, Internet where artists are able to use software to create digital artwork. Loli uses contemporary advancements to create her art. With technology and digital editing programs, this accessibility has influenced their creative choices because the artists have a way to make it just right. The digital editing programs allow the artists to ‘undo’ work that they might feel just isn’t placed right. This is much different compared to the artists that created their collages by hand because work was stuck where it was placed, even if the artist wanted to change where it was placed.

This artwork demonstrates Loli’s use of modern vintage art with her twist of science fiction (“UFO Abduction” by Eugenia Loli, https://cargocollective.com/eugenialoli/)

Loli’s choice of tools and materials affect the way I interpret the composition. While observing her work, it is unique and interesting to see how Loli uses well-known celebrities of the forties and fifties or uses women and children that reflect the 50s decade and see them edited in a collage with a space themed backdrop. Loli’s artwork has a sci-fi theme along with it which makes it much more interesting to enjoy.

In “Stars for Breakfast,” there is distinct contrast between time periods. The setting of the artwork takes place in a classic fifties kitchen however the inside of the fridge is in outer space. There is contrast with colors, kitchen and family are subtle colors but outer space is a mixture of black, deep purple and tan.

In “UFO Abduction,” I see two strict vertical lines which represent the UFO grabbing the man and a contrasting horizontal line which is where the sky meets the sea. The colors used in this artwork are in harmony with the overall piece.

Out of the readings that we had this week, the artwork Le Cirque by artist Laurent Chehere caught my attention. This piece of artwork is a portrait-oriented collage that features a circus tent floating in the middle of the image frame with silvery-gray clouds in the background. A lone figure in a dark suit resides on the top left of the circus tent with balls and bowling pins falling from the bottom center.

This photo collage depicts a seemless collage of different styles inspired by artists like Bruce Davidson, Wim Wender, and Federico Fellini. (Artwork by: Laurent Chehere, Le Cirque, 2012).

From doing research on the artist’s website, it looks like he does a combination of digital and older-processed collages. Chehere doesn’t really go much more in depth on the actual process of his artwork but if I had to guess, making the collage is the analog part of his work and the digital part of the process comes in when he makes an artwork larger in print. As a current artist, I feel that Chehere might be influenced in knowing about the older ways of doing collage and is, like he mentions, inspired by older parts of Paris. Thereby creating larger prints from which his viewers can see the smaller intricate details that can be seen in this piece and other pieces included in his Flying Houses series.

When I looked at the artist’s inspiration for this specific piece, it made more sense as to why he chose to do things the way he did. I looked at the artists that Chehere said inspired this artwork; Bruce Davidson, Wim Wender’s Angels of Desire, and Federico Fellini’s La Strada. After studying the different technical aspects of each style of work, it was pretty recognizable in Chehere’s Le Cirque. Davidson’s dramatic lighting and mood that can be felt through the atmosphere in his photos is noticeable in the emotional feel that is exuded from Chehere’s work. Then, Chehere uses inspiration from Wender’s film by bringing a storylike quality to the way that the tent floats around in the clouds. Finally, as Chehere mentions when talking about this artwork, that Fellini’s movie theme inspired the idea of the tent itself but he twists the idea a little bit with the characters within the artwork but doesn’t give off the entire storyline. Merely a glimpse into it.

The artist I chose for this assignment was Jiyen Lee a Korean artist who specializes in  hypnotizing digital collage. The images she creates are extremely intriguing to look at, and for the most part what seems to be from a bird’s eye view. The series of images appears to be men, women, children, strollers, suitcases, and pets going up and down escalators or walkways. She arranged them in all sorts of different directions to really make your head spin around and take a good look.

There are all sorts of different sizes as you can see from the images attached below. Each image has a different sort of texture to it and this is because of how she came to arrange the walkways and escalators of people and some of these images have a sort of 3D affect to them because of the depths and angles she used when assembling each image. Within majority work it is still unknown which direction these people walking or which way the escalators are moving. Jiyen also uses line symmetry to keep people interested and their eyes moving along the image.

Through these images Jiyen has created she shows the busy world we live in and how people are always going from one place to the next. Although all her images revolving around the same concept, it opened my eyes and allowed me to see that a photo collage or a photomontage doesn’t need to be a 1000 different images all combined into one.

Here you can see men and women going up and down escalators that have been stretched and turned creating a very unique design. Image by: Jiyen Lee

Here you see walk ways rather then escalators that are filled with people walking to their next destination. Image by: Jiyen Lee

In this image there is no distinction on which direction the people are moving or whether or not the stairs are descending or ascending. Image by: Jiyen Lee

This photo depicts different types of design elements such as repetition, shape and contrast. All of these elements work together to create this illusional collage. “A wisp of a smile,” by Matthieu Bourel, 2014. http://dojo.electrickettle.fr/collages/duplicity-serie/

The artist that I chose is Matthieu Bourel, a surreal collage artist. This piece stood out to me because of its simple, yet complex nature. The artist does several collage styles, which he separates into various series. Each series has a central theme that explores different layering style collages. He creates these collages with the juxtaposition of real photographs and digital art. His method, in his words, is a lot of playing around with old magazines and images. His own unique style of real collage layers and digital art make him standout among other collage artists.

His other pieces are clearly inspired by pop-culture, such as using Dorothy from Wizard of Oz as his subject. Bourel was quoted saying he takes in the commercialism, television, and digital era we currently have, and channels it into his own interpretation: “data-ism” (Leavitt, via Georgie publication).

This example showcases a different style collage that Bourel creates. “Migrant,” photo by Matthieu Bourel, 2010. http://dojo.electrickettle.fr/projects/collage-serie-ii/

According to Bourel, he loves getting the viewer to interact with his art in their own provocative thoughts and connections. Many of his works have been analyzed for their underlying messages on society, emotion, time, space, and more (The Re Art). This can be clearly seen in the image to the right. This collage consists of magazine cut outs as well as newspaper cutouts. The man’s face is covered in the words in a mask-like state. This could convey many different narratives, possibly relating to racism or being held captive. Whatever the case, Bourel clearly compiles these images to showcase an idea.

His choice materials is key to interpreting the messages he is conveying. With Bourel’s handmade paper collages, he really develops and creates a storyline with every image he cuts. This technique personally affects the way I interpret his art because of the particular placement of each piece. These layers are not just images piled into Photoshop, they are real, cut out newspaper or magazine images, and this adds authenticity.

Other sources used:

http://dojo.electrickettle.fr/about/

Matthieu Bourel: Collage and the power of images