Assemblage sketches
Assemblage – the process of bringing together things that might not get along, or maybe they do, or maybe we’re not sure. But we can try.
February 2022 – I’m taking a course through Fibre Arts Take Two called Essence of Identity - a Masterclass with Donna Watson. I signed up because I wanted more clarity and focus on the directions I could take with my art.
I’m full of ideas and imagination, and sometimes with too many ideas I don’t know where to start. Or I start and I don’t know how to continue making it. I want to know how to move through it.
While I feel I have a fairly good sense of my identity as an artist, and my work is meaningful and personal, I don’t look ahead. I want to see where I’m going sometimes.
Assemblage sculptures
Many of the artists in the course are collage mixed media artists. That’s when I heard the word assemblage and I realized I think that’s what I also do, which I didn’t know before!
Assemblage is a visual art form similar to collage, which combines 2 and 3D, often found elements into a work of art; it’s a collection of things which have been gathered together or the process of bringing together.
My healing chimes are (in art parlance) assemblage sculptures and so are the bundles and wands that I make. Somehow knowing this made me laugh inside and offered me a simple opening to explore this more.
Assemblage sketches
The recommended books for this course are fantastic. One of the books I listened to while working was Lisa Congdon’s, Find Your Artistic Voice: The Essential Guide to Working Your Creative Magic. There are so many insightful and useful things she says that I took note.
Artists should always be practicing their art. Much like musicians and athletes, we practice to get better at how to do something; we practice to keep our flow and explore new things; and we practice to reach into our highest potential with our art.
Sketching is important. Sketching in a dedicated journal the ideas and inspirations an artist has is a way to bring thought to form. A sketch is just that – an idea in form.
In short, I concluded that I want to practice more and sketch my ideas out. I feel I need to.
I’ve never been a fan of sketching, though – the kind where you have a dedicated journal and write and draw all your ideas down. I wish I was and I’ve tried it over and over again but have never stuck with it. The ideas that I draw out are never what I actually make, and maybe that’s another thing too.
When I have an idea, I just try to make it rather than thinking about it and drawing it out. I like that kind of experimentation and spontaneity. But it’s also become a barrier. Ideas come and go, and when they go, they seem to move on. And in reality, I don’t often have the luxury of having an idea and then just going to make it then and there.
In the book, Congdon interviews several artists. One artist makes large-scale sculptures that are meticulous and take time. She gets bored after a while. Ha! I loved hearing that. So she makes small-scale pieces while she works on her big pieces to keep her excited. She says her small-scale pieces are sketches.
That’s it! What if I make small-scale assemblage sketches and see what happens! Maybe this can be both practicing and sketching.
So I began. I had cut up 3-inch squares from a remnant of handwoven indigo-shibori dyed cotton fabric from Laos. Then I added one kind of seed pod, then another, and another, and finally a stick. It was a “collection of things which have been gathered together” just like the definition of assemblage says, arranging them just so.
Please check out the fun and short two-minute video above or here for the process of bringing it all together.
I was paying attention to what I was seeing and how I was making decisions as I experimented with the various elements.
The size of the first seed pod on the square – some were too small, others were too big. How did I know? I just did.
The color of the second pod, darker than the first, and balancing them together on the indigo square, taking into account the shibori-dyed pattern underneath. I found that I wanted to move the objects for better balance or interest.
The third seed pod, a different shape and color from the other two, but somehow too much, too overpowering. I wished it wasn’t so. I love these whirligigs, but maybe this was not where they felt belonging.
The fourth element, sticks of varying lengths and thicknesses, of subtle colors and textures and line shapes, placing them here, in between there, changing my mind, moving it elsewhere. I felt the overcrowding.
Realizing that three objects worked better on the shibori-dyed square and any three of the four would do well. But what about the one that wouldn’t? I felt bad.
Realizing that hand stitching was a whole other element! The balance was different, and sometimes in the process of hand stitching, the items would move. Sometimes the move was better. Sometimes it wasn’t. The seedpods and sticks had that control and made the decisions.
Much of the paying attention and decision making process was intuitive. Or was it? Design elements and principles are also deeply learned and ingrained after decades of working with and understanding it through my art, my home, and in my photography.
At what point do I decide, or let go of deciding, or maybe we decide together?
And I’m also learning new things.
About sketching ideas in ways that might work for me, as process and paying attention, using materials directly in small-scale experiments. I’d at least like to try.
About practicing my art, much like I do with Buddhist meditation and QiGong. It’s a practice, over and over again. It’s a process of becoming and getting better. There is no final goal, just insights along the way.
About paying attention to the nuances of relationships between and among things. And people, too. Sometimes we all belong, but sometimes it’s crowded and we feel we want to belong elsewhere for a little while.
About the spaces we create. Who decides who can be there and who can’t? And when the space changes, can we all adjust and adapt and integrate all of us, in all our colors and shapes, textures and sizes? We have to move to do that. We have to rebalance to do that. We have to change to do that.
Assemblage as a verb, as the process of bringing together. The process of bringing together things that might not get along, or maybe they do, or maybe we’re not sure. We can at least try.
“Assemblage sketches” was originally published as an exclusive post to my Patreon supporters in February 2022. Now it’s public and available to you, too!
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