Art in the time of Cholera

Collage by Mary M Payne

Well, I think that nothing has happened in my lifetime that compares to the pandemic and lockdown we are all experiencing today. 

  Of course the virus is real but doesn't feel real when one is healthy and safe and lives in a beautiful community in the "green zone" of France.  Yes, our department is so far the third least hit by the virus so we are a "green" designation.  

 Here in the south of France people seem to be acting normally.    There are few masks in view and many folks are out and about despite the affidavit required to leave the house and then only for an hour.  

I have been in the garden almost every day,  thrilled with this spring which seems even more lush than usual.  Is it that I am taking the time to experience this season more during the lockdown or is it true that despite little rain, all of the plants are in raptures? It may be both.  And it may be that the mature roots of our garden are deeper this year, giving some plants an underground water source. 

Just before the lockdown went into effect on March 17, I was attending an art class once a week.  In that class we had a theme presented to us to work on for about a month.   Today I am taking time out from the garden to look back on the work I produced for my class.  

The theme this time was to depict what is "infinitely large or what is infinitely small".  Since I was not inclined to take the project literally as some museum artists have done with large installations,  I decided to use the idea of the cosmos as the point of reference that was infinitely large and "talk' about our place in the vast universe.

  I wanted to try the idea of surrealist collage as a starting point.

 First I  assembled a lot of images that appealed to me.  I found most of them for free online.  The quality of the images when printed was paramount and I found that using Laser images was preferable to my own inkjet HP.   I also tried different weights of paper.   I first used photo paper but found it was too thick for my purposes and that I disliked the shiny aspect of even mat photo paper.   In fact with all the printing and with ordinary HP cartridges costing 50 euros for one cartridge , this was probably the most expensive project I have yet done for this class. 

 For paste I used ordinary white paste to adhere the print paper to 180 gram Canson and tack that onto 300 gram watercolor papers as backgrounds.    When the layers became thick I used double sided tape to adhere one to the other.  

   In every case in my series of 6,  I use the human hand as a through line thread of cohesion. 

 In the first collage here, you will see a diver about to execute a backflip.   I liked this image and put it in and then realized that for me it represented the fact that we, as humans, are for the most part "blind" to where we are going ( like the diver). We take our lives and the majesty of the universe for granted.  We frolic through our lives little realizing consequences.   So now my surreal collages are not so surreal , there is a theme. 

  I would continue to post but the font keeps changing on my attempt to post.  I have looked into it on Google forums and many have the same problem.  However, no answer is forthcoming.    Sorry.