Infusiones

Schwitters styled collage I made today with my collection of old bookmarks 

from an antiquarian bookshop just around the corner, all glued on a vintage board.

Homage to Schwitters Merz Style

Was fun tearing up an 1864 Peterson's Magazine.

Photographed on my kitchen table, hence the wood border.

The Juggler

Schwittering

Mostly bits picked up off the workroom floor or out of the waste paper bin.

Kurt Schwitters´ MERZ construction

This is from the archives - a assembling magazine contribution I made last year.

the coloured pieces are paper on wooden "tiles"

I once saw a model of Kurt´s MERZ construction in Hannover - that impressed me deeply.

And yes - I know - the below one is NOT a collage, but I made this linocut of Kurt Schwitters´ portrait and printed it on old book pages and boards - and I  like to share this with you, too.

And: Sorry for my absence, friends .....

what brown can do for you

From my archives. I poked around and found this: it's not Merz, but maybe it has a bit of the Merz buzz. Now I'm going to immerse my brain in bonafide Merz and see what pops out!

BTW, the title of this collage is, or was, a slogan of the United Parcel Service.

THEME: Merz (Kurt Schwitters)

I just finished reading a terrific book: Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century by Jeb Rasula. I've read quite a few books on Dada, but this one is a cut above. The author is a very good writer, and he really pulls the history and influence of Dada together so that it makes perfect sense/nonsense. Highly recommended! And it got me thinking a lot about Kurt Schwitters.

"Merz" was Kurt Schwitters's personal made-up word for the art he did, which included a lot of collage. There are some links to his artwork at the bottom of that Wiki page, or else just google his name and look at his art that way. He did a lot of really beautiful and innovative collage, and was a bigtime collector of what other people called "rubbish" to put in his collages and assemblages. He made the interiors of whole buildings into Merz, long before museum installations or anyone doing that sort of thing.

Get fired up by Schwitters and make a Merz! Try to incorporate some rubbish in your collage. If you don't find the Merz theme appealing, just consider this an open-theme week.

I don't have any Merzoid works in my archives for an example, but I'm sure that Michael Leigh will be able to post a Schwitters homage or two to get us started. (Or not... whatever...) I'm really looking forward to trying my hand at making a Merz!

This is my last theme, you guys. For me, at least, it's been an inspiring two months. =smile= I hope y'all enjoyed it, too. Who's gonna volunteer to be the next Themameister (theme chooser)?

Benjamin Franklin was the first person to chart the Gulf Stream

Alexander Agassiz, a preeminent oceanographer of the 19th century, attributed the first scientific basis for exploring the Gulf Stream to American statesman Benjamin Franklin.  Franklin published this map of the Gulf Stream in 1769, 200 years before a submersible named after him drifted below the surface to study this river in the ocean.

Billy finds the Loch Ness Monster

peering through palm fronds

Eyes from a painting by Salvador Dalí. (But you knew that.)

Have a Coke and a Smile at Sunset on the Coast

B&W photo of Gulf Coast (Florida) sunset. Couple from a vintage Coca Cola ad.

See Saw

Probably not apparent at first glance but some mountains and sea definately here in this collage amongst the other bewildering things like the spaceman with the gun that fires blue spaghetti and the Tunnocks Tea Cake hovering just at the edge above the strange mystical figure see sawing by the shore - the gleanings - the racoon, the bagful of nuts and other thrilling features!

endless months

Here's one from my archives, an autobiographical collage about the big decluttering project I did in 2014. Thanks so much, Angie, for putting the theme up. That's the first time we've had a snowstorm literally sever the info cable to our house. Just because I live right outside of Washington, DC, doesn't mean my old suburb has 21st-century wiring. We're lucky we didn't lose power as well.

About the theme: for some reason I've been thinking a lot about how geographically scattered the KK regulars are—from the west coast of this continent, then a couple of east-going hops, to all the way across the Atlantic and onward—even if we don't have anyone currently posting from the Middle/Far East, or from down under. And I've been trying to make this a pretty open-ended month, since the four weeks of pulp themes were narrower. Thus, a theme that's geographically wide-open!

THEME: Seashore and/or Mountains

I just received an email from a friend of Fi's who informed the recent winter storm has knocked out Fiona's internet connection and she called him to ask me to post her theme for this week!

Hopefully Fi will be up and running in the next day or so.

Calisthenics Before Breakfast

Athleticism in Action

Note to Michael Leigh...

...just noticed the terrific new Kollage Kit banner! Taa Taa

A Fine Example of Highbrowism

Ev'rybody's Talking 'Bout Bagism...

homage to paul klee

This one's about Modernism. I love Paul Klee! Here's the original painting, titled "Double" (1940), to which this collage is a tribute.

Antiquarianism

Snakeism

Yes, this is one real tough board game without the helpful ladders! I Like this qote regarding other versions of Snakeism found on Google - "Any long, pointless, convoluted piece of speech which serves no apparent purpose apart from annoying and confusing the listener" .

Televisionism

inspired by constructivism

This is inspired by "Dynamic Suprematism," a painting by Kasimir Malevich. I'm a little vague on my art history here, but I think constructivism was one of the "-isms" Stalin declared to be "Western decadence." So Malevich made up the word "suprematism" to describe what he was doing, which was basically constructivism.

THEME: Illustrate an -ism

Right around the time René Dubuffet coined the word "collage" from coller, to glue, in his native French, there was an explosion of "-isms" in the art world. After centuries with mostly only classicism and realism, all of a sudden there was impressionism, postimpressionism, fauvism. cubism, constructivism, surrealism, futurism, vorticism, modernism, expressionism, primitivism, abstract expressionism, postmodernism, photorealism—obviously just a partial list, and the list goes ever onward. Fortunately, I suppose, there's never been a collagism. As for those who try to make Dada into Dadaism... they just don't get it, do they? =smile=

But you don't have to restrict yourself to art movements. Or made-up art movements, either. There's also spiritualism and alcoholism and pessimism and nihilism and all those philosophical and religious "-isms” and...

House Of Love

Love in Bloom

Combination of vintage hand colored French postcard, a desert scene with a blooming plant, a floral bouquet and a pretty bird with an orange head & breast.

Clothes Overboard

prunus myrabalanus rotundus

Title of collage is the scientific name of the plant from which I snipped these orange flowers, drawn and painted by Basilius Besler.

Tunnocks Tea Cakes Fan Club Meet Up

enthusiastic scarf

Background (scarf) from a photo by Autumn de Wilde. Foreground (orange) from a painting by Robert Ryman.

I'm in an orange mood

Fire Dogs

Family Dog

asemic writing dogs me

Background reproduces a page from the Voynich Manuscript, which all the scholars and cryptographers in the world have not been able to decode.

The Wolfman and His Pack

sleepy pooch

Junk-Yard-Dawg

Poodles

From the archives

Year of the Dog

Beyond Our Kennel

From the archive - alternative cover art I did for John Hegley's book of poems back in the 90's. Rejected by the publishers for the one I thought inferior. O well , at least they used one of them! They managed to loose the original too but paid me for it.