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Cloud sky grass ocean mountain scene scene scene

#collage #bluecollage #mountaincollage #cloudappreciationsociety

cloud earth tree sky mountain water fall fall fall

Here you can see my (in)ability to cut out a perfect circle. Second of nine cloud collages.

What does framing do? Isn't all art just framing? Look here, no, wait, look here, see it this way. As Joan Didion says, writing is the act of saying, "listen to me, see it my way, change your mind". (https://lithub.com/joan-didion-why-i-write/)

Hashtags?

#clouds #cloudappreciationsociety #framing #collage #cutoutclouds #sunspotmaybe

New work! Well, newer.

First in a series of nine created with images from A Cloud a Day by Gavin Pretor-Pinney.

This is possibly a more collage-y of this series. What's collage-y? Hm, maybe the juxtaposition of objects with strange scenery (here, the sheep and boat in the mountains) or the way objects are juxtaposed with each other to make new objects. Whereas I think usually I'm more interested in color and texture and balance (or not-balance) than objects.

#collage #cloudappreciationsociety #cloudscollage #cutout #sheepinmountains #boatinmountain

last one! i'm suitably wary.

next up: cloud a day.

#cutuppoetry #collage #collageflowers #regal

Second to last one! (Though in no particular order, I'm now thinking...)

#collage #collagepoetry #cutuppoetry #collageflowers #flowers

I lied; this is the third-to-last one of the series.

Botanical illustrations are captivating. I have been trying to draw a creosote bush, or rather just a part of one with leaves and some flowers, and recently I got to spend some time with an actual creosote bush, rather than photos, and it made a huge difference. The illustrations, like photos I suppose, are these moments captured by the artist, an attempt to stake in place the full and rounded plant that lives in time. It's easy to say the illustration is reductive, but I don't think that's quite true. The illustration is pinned down. To see the plant is to see it live.

#collage #collageart #collageflowers #cutoutpoetry #cutuppoetry #yellowflowers

Just four more left of the series after this one.

I had originally tried to scan these, but I found the scans made the collage too flat and too perfect; you couldn't see the outlines of the word cut outs, and the illustrations looked too much part of the paper. So I ended up taking photos, which did a better job of preserving the depth of the collage. But the photos also have a bit of distortion to them.

#collage #collagepoetry #collageflowers #cutuppoetry

Bored yet? I don't know, the cut up flowers are so compelling. My collage aesthetic really changed after this, so appreciate the simplicity of this while you can. ;)

#collage #collagepoetry #cutuppoetry #collageflowers

I made so many of these. I was so committed, so obsessed. Or maybe it was just a good form, one that kept giving good results.

Also, "Can you imagine, the brightness" is one of my favorite lines from the whole collection.

Should I try hashtags?

#collage #collagepoetry #collageflowers #cutuppoetry

For me, cut out poetry has an aesthetic similar to working with language models, in that it's all about unexpected juxtaposition and a lack of grounding in necessary sense-making, yet the results can be quite different. Perhaps when I do cut out poetry I tend to minimize my use of function words (articles, prepositions, etc) so the poem ends up very dense, whereas language models are happy to be looser and more verbose. This could be fixed, obviously, with a weighting function, which might actually be an interesting project...

A fanciful portrait for humans.

Recently discovered I still have a few of these lying around; I guess I didn't get around to mailing out all of them.