Collage 101 by Kaili Woop

from W27 The Collage Issue (February/March 2022)

An Excerpt from Clemens by Margo Żak

Collage is used in various ways to organize thoughts in a creative manner. At FIT, there are creatives from different majors that can keep adding to their collage, and there is no hesitation in terms of material or composition. Their collage is typically composed of photographs that help portray the “rough draft” of their ideas. This makes their collages more process oriented because of their desire to have resolution in areas that are completely different, such as creating mood boards that lead towards a final product.

In Fine Arts, collage serves as a purpose to quickly collect information in a more formal way. For example, Fine Arts students think about their understanding of composition, color, value and light when working with collage. They also have the option to combine different parts of collages and allow that to be the artwork itself. Artists can think about collage both abstractly and figuratively by reducing the parts of their collage into planes to create forms.

In the Junior year of the Fine Arts major, students are encouraged to further their experimentation of collage in both traditional and digital media. Kayla Edmonston (Fine Arts, ‘23) is one of the students who is very passionate about creating collages. To Kayla, collage is how she can navigate that space to arrive at a finished resolution within the collage.

Kayla started to explore collage in her Freshman year drawing course with Adjunct Professor Stephanie Pierce (Chair of the Fine Arts Department). She was assigned to make a collage that began her knowledge of exploring space, depth, color, value and temperature. When it comes to creating a collage, the first aspect that comes to Kayla’s mind is the composition, which determines the overall depth, space and imagery of her work. She then goes on to prepare paint swatches to make a wide value scale chart, or the lights and darks she plans to use in her collage.

Collage has improved her transition between interior and exterior space. Kayla emphasizes the importance of color and temperature in her process to illuminate the illusion of space.

Kayla’s artwork is influenced by the paintings of Susan Lichtman, who transitions from one neutral color to another creating a “world” through flat geometric planes. When Kayla’s subject matter changed to landscape, she would constantly return to that subject matter and work on it over a period of time. This idea comes from her admiration of the painter Josephine Halverson, an artist that is on site to create her work and does not leave until she finishes her painting.

Josephine’s idea of working under surveillance translated this action to her own collage making — observing something over an extended period of time. She believes that can be done the best with collage. At FIT, Kayla has been influenced by Professor Stephanie Pierce when it comes to discovering the truth in her work as well as her art process.

Kayla is constantly thinking about the materials that she uses in her everyday life and how she can connect them to her art, making a stronger personal connection to her collages.

She is interested in how the atmosphere influences the environment. In other words, she observes how the figures and objects in the space of her composition interact with one another.

A significant experience that changed her life is her experience at the Mount Gretna Art Residency. It had a major impact on her studio practice, and exploring the collage making process. Immersed in a new environment, Kayla was able to make her first huge collage. She believes that collage is a material choice that she can fully commit to give life to the environment she depicts in her collages.

In Kayla’s most recent work, she is expanding her experimentation with collage by utilizing collagraphs, which are a type of print in printmaking that uses a variety of objects collaged together that produce textures in her paintings. These prints further enhance the layers of space she desires in her painting. Her use of collagraphs makes her collages even more personal because the objects she chooses to create these prints are objects from her everyday life.

Kayla hopes to expand and clarify her combination of printmaking collage with her traditional paintings to enhance her sense of space. She hopes to add variety to her mark making, including marks that she would have difficulty achieving solely with paint.