I’ve always been drawn to collage. In the order of art forms, photography (and simple, clean displays of it) will always be my favorite, but the intricacy of collage is an extremely close second. (I also love screen and block printing.)   I have a whole process when I collage, which includes collecting       magazines, then tearing out pages I want to keep, a day of cutting out what I like, and then organizing it all before I even start to sift through the pieces. I’ve been lacking lately due to this blog and how much I enjoy digital collaging as well, but the process is far simpler and I miss the tangible art.     Completely intrigued by the life and work of Peter Beard, I think I have all the inspiration I need here to get back to it:

From a Vanity Fair 1996 interview: “The diary habit began back when Beard and Radziwill were lovers and Jacqueline Onassis gave him a leather-bound journal he proceeded to fill with all manner of debris. Year by year, the diaries piled up, overstuffed volumes grotesquely swollen with the detritus of a life, each page densely layered with photographs and an astonishing assortment of other items: tiny rodent skulls, candy-bar wrappers, keys, buttons, flamingo feathers, a pocket from a pair of velvet jeans, peanut shells, dried leaves, plastic cocktail stirrers, a piece of a cereal box, mysterious newspaper headlines (woman saved from slime!), bones and rocks, smears and dribbles of blood (always Beard’s favorite artistic medium), intricate line drawings and elaborately inscribed quotations, cigarette butts, rubber gloves, matchbooks, fish skeletons, plastic ketchup packets, a desiccated lizard, a dung-beetle foot—the variety is endless.”

I’m not sure sure how his book has escaped me so far, but it is definitely at the top of my want list!

 

images via Contributing Editor,  Just Say Maux and Tomboy Style (one of my favorite blogs– they have a book coming soon!)