WOW. It’s done. Real.
I’m standing in front of my ‘Maggie’s garden’ photo collage exhibition, currently on at the Whanganui Community Art Centre (from 4 – 14 Nov).
A year ago it was an idea in my head……a photo collage exhibition based upon photos of my mother’s garden after she died, as my first full time (emerging) artist exhibition.
Mum & I had a shared love of colour, nature, photography & craft. Mum loved photography, quilt making, gardening & had tried her hand at most crafty things, but it wasn’t until after she died that I realized that’s where my creative seed was planted – growing up watching my resourceful & creative mum make things, so I decided my first exhibition as a full time (emerging) artist would return me to my love of colour & pattern, with a traditional ‘craft’ twist to it.
My Mum would take photos & put them on the wall. I take photos & cut them up for collage, or play with them to create abstracts. I wanted to experiment with the concept of using photos in the tradition of craft – quilt making in this case – by using the printed photo as the quilt' material. The concept involved layering up the printed photos to create a visual ‘quilt’.
Ideas are great things aren’t they?! They get me all excited……. about what I imagine is possible. Then there’s the reality of making that imagined idea REAL. Looking around the exhibition now, I feel a deep sense of accomplishment, of having ‘grown up’ a lot in the process of creating it. I love making colourful, vibrant pattern. For this exhibition I firstly created the photo collage as a single layer of printed photos, but by experimenting with layering printed photos, I’ve created a very different, unique experience that visitors to the exhibition have also noticed.
There’s one stand out piece in the exhibition called ‘Zen Zone’ (shown below) & visitors have responded to the physicality of layered photos in that ‘quilt’ photo collage so positively that I’m definitely going to spend more time developing this concept, & making much BIGGER work for another exhibition in 2021!
Vicky xxx
