I must start by saying that I have awesome friends. Friends who not only nudge you to try out different things but also get together to try it out with you.
One such thing has been collaging for me. Wowsig/Aakaksha has been hosting a bunch of these art parties and out the many that I missed, the ones that I found most enriching is collage parties.
I can talk about two of them. One was with close friends, with lots of inside jokes, banter and creation. The other with a group of awesome women(whom I admire), where we just created, ate macaroons, butter-jam toast, had coffee(made by paras, who self proclaims his house coffee as the best in Bangalore- and I think I would agree) and ofcourse that perfect cup of tea that Sathya didi makes.
While orbit(obu) continues to ignores us, we cover the table and ourselves with scraps, flyers, receipts, lots of glue(or gond), packaging and some uber gorgeous books & magazines (that I would normally dread cutting) but am nudged to anyway.
meet orbit a.k.a obu
If you know me outside of internet, you know I am very hands-on. Still, one of the things that I continue to struggle with is overthinking about ideas- because you have so many. And obsessing over perfectionism. This is despite being able to create a decent body of work(in life), I think I am still not happy with myself & what I create.
Collaging was different. Maybe it the constraints that you only work with what you have in front of you, I have been able to push through and make collages that have made me relatively happy. I didn't think about the process I followed until now, but turns out I did have a process.
I look out for anything that stands out. Initial few minutes are spent in just collecting such interesting things, like some bold images, patterns, slogans/text. At this time I don't have clarity on how I will use them. But the process is to collect these drives the outcomes I shape.
Once I get items with me, I try to visualise what I can make with them. I mentally try out a few things and choose very quickly(very unlike me in other forms of creative practice) and get started with putting things on the canvas. Basically, the overthinking loop is broken by forcing hands hands to focus on physical, tactile choices instead of abstract worries.
I kind of go with the flow here and let the medium control what I make. It is perhaps the most forgiving I have been while creating anything!
fin.