Collaging a Mystery

July 7th, 2008

I think mixing it up with projects for pure pleasure is so important. So when I read about the 6x6 collage exchange on flickr, I decided to join in. I ended up pairing up with Shelley who was in a class with me at Artfest! The idea of the exchange is that you put together a packet of collage materials, ship it off to your partner, and then you make six 6"x6" collages with the materials you receive. You can check out what other folks have done with the challenge here. Above is "Cutting Line," the first of the collages I did with the materials that Shelley sent me. In this one I used two black and white photos, a strip of flim, and a piece of a dress pattern. It had a dark feeling to it which made me want to tell a story, a sort of murder mystery in images.

Although, I didn't flush out the story and I kind of let it come together intuitively, I sensed that it was a story about a model/actress who came to Hollywood to make it big. She does well, travels the world, and has quite a following, including an obsessed photographer/killer. Spooky!

Putting together these images, reminded me of something I used to love to do as a kid, write mysteries. I remember sitting inside on hot summer days and writing out spooky stories until I spooked myself. With the neighborhood kids, I used to also write plays, make up games, and make videos of mysteries that were a take off on the movie, Clue. I'd kind of forgotten about this interest until discussions with Julia brought up my love of Nancy Drew books as a kid.

Above is a detail of one of the 6 collages, "Her Dress was from Paris" and a detail of another piece, it was in the stars, is below.

It was fun cropping out some details and making some mini collage images out of them. And I enjoyed imagining this spooky story through images instead of words. You can check out all the final images and detail shots in my flickr photostream. Perhaps you'll see a different story in them! One more detail pic below from blindfolded.

13 Responses

I have given you a blog award, you can pick it up on my blog :)

These are so cool!! Leah, you never cease to amaze me. :)

this is a great series.

I am impressed…. your imagination, style….

It is amazing how many different groups and fascinating things you can find on flickr if you know where to look. I just discovered today that people trade ATCs on flickr, and now i find out there are swap groups too! How wonderful!

I LOVE that top piece !~ so mysterious ~ such a rich
narrative of curiosity…

your work is so fully realized and magical and
layered ~ i love it :)

Leah–
it’s so great to see this series with your explanations! i had a great time with our exchange.
thanks again!
xoShelley

Where DO you find the time for all of this?! I’m in the studio breaking and remaking pieces that hae been around too long and was feeling very resourceful until I stopped by and read this. No way to keep up with you!

I am sorry about your kittie and so hope she’s well soon. It is hard to have a stick animal and not know what to do to make them feel better. So I’ll send along white light for *both* of you.

How is the kitty? I hope its doing remarkably well right now! My fingers and toes are crossed too!

I do love what you’ve done with these amazing collage pieces. The idea that they have spooky mysteries floating through them, even if they’re just in my/your imagination, *sighs* makes me love them even more!

What a cool post! I love the pieces that you came up with and I really agree about taking on projects for fun! All work and no play makes artist’s work look flat- and can instigate a creativity strike *ahhh!* not good!

This sounds like so much fun. I liked the 2nd photo where the woman is all a floral pattern. Your interpretation is so neat.

oh these are just awsome…. what a fun fun swap!

Great work, will have to try this. So many fun things for artists out there. Thanks for being such a great resource of information!

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