Second Round Collages

Both of these collages evolved from my previous two collages. The inspiration of passage of time is still present in these. I took the idea of passage of time as meaning, timeless, overlapping, evolve. These are very abstract interpretations as I am moving forward in search of finding a spatial quality about graffiti.

The first image is the way my collage was presented and the second image is the simply just the digital copy of the collage in order to be able to take a closer look. The purpose of this collage was to take graffiti and art work out of context. I photoshopped images of graffiti I have collected on to the first four building I could think of that I would never imagine graffiti on; the MFA, the Boston Public Library, the White House and Falling Water. It is sort of funny, I almost felt like I was doing something wrong when photoshopping. The point was to show that graffiti is illegal when placed in alleyways, on walls of abandoned buildings, on dumpsters and on train cars, but what if it started showing up on famous buildings? Next I layered over the graffitied buildings, images of the placed graffiti are normally place. But I chose images that contained no graffiti to see what these spaces truly look like. Lastly, I wrote the words that graffiti represent on to little canvases. I layered the canvases onto the photo collage. This was an attempt to take a well know art material and place those qualities that make graffiti frowned upon onto them, turning them into art... right? because they are on canvases they are art, right?

If you were given the freedom to say whatever you wanted to say, what would it be? That is what I asked people around my studio. I handed each person five empty index cards and asked them to write whatever they wanted. I wanted expressions whether, loud, motivational, provocative, obscene, etc. I was surprised with the results. I was expecting obscenities and a lot more negative reactions. However, I received a lot of really great quotes, some drawings, some funny words, some references to studio. For the most part everything I was given were really great expressions. This proves that when given the opportunity to speak, it isn't a bad thing. Passage of time also works its way in here with the idea that, on a wall of constant graffiti, no one piece lasts forever. It is part of the art. So I took the note cards that I received and picked out some of the "better" ones and put them down first, then cut out some of the phrases and images and started placing them over the base cards very carefully not to cover anything, and I repeated this until I had to start covering up what was underneath. I left small places where you can still see the chipboard I used as a "wall" to show that it is still the same under there even with the content on top.