Assemblage — the beginning

The mental art muscles are forging ahead a mile a minute. The physical art muscles are still a bit reluctant but it's time to try creating on a slightly larger scale (than an ATC) and get back to the intended subject of this blog — using found objects in artwork.

I dedicate this post to all the artists who are healing and on their way back to creativity.

When I start an assemblage, the subject isn't usually the impetus. An idea with a heaping spoonful of inspiration comes along when I begin playing with my selection of art materials, a.k.a. junk. The large pieces are generally discards, castoffs, street junk and other found objects in boxes in the workshop. The tiny bits are in mason jars standing in a row on my studio shelves: washers, springs, nails, bearings, keys and the unidentifiable, sorted by color: gold, black, rust, silver, and brass.


These objects combined with handmade paper, collage images, fibers and acrylic paint will surely lead to something. Color is a great starting point.


A touch of verdigris on a penny or chunk of copper pipe suggests a theme of shade of green and orange. A piece of welding splatter (anything is fair game) from a work yard had an incredibly beautiful maroon and carmine blush that accented the dull silver-gray metal.

The miscellaneous car part (?) below has yummy rainbow hues of violet, teal gold and more.


Once a generous selection of colored items is strewn about it's time to start thinking of a support for the piece. Before a final decision is made I have to think about how heavy the found materials are and have some idea of how to attach them. In the case of very large items like the old garden hoe I once used, a shallow box will be required. The inside of the box will hide the wires, nuts for the screws and the ends of nails as the items will be mounted on the outside.

The box gets a coat of primer and several coats of gesso. When it's dry I arrange and rearrange the found items and other materials until I have something that looks pleasing and has a flow. The trick is to get mixture of apparently disparate items to relate to each other. This is probably the most time consuming part of the art making — adding and subtracting until it looks right and knowing when to stop. Then all the items must be removed and placed in the same way on another board until the background is finished.












Some areas of the box get a bit more gesso if I want to work it into tissue paper for a crinkly look. Layers of torn (unprinted) newsprint give a smoother look and the edges will be easy to highlight with dry-brushing later. I don't normally use paper towel, so in this assemblage it was a first. I'd forgotten my newsprint in the studio when I packed up for a demo at a local art group's monthly meeting and had to improvise. My preference is for background materials that show texture but aren't too obvious and paper towel is so......paper towelish!














More visual texture is applied with paint. It's fun to play around and see what happens. I used a lot of painting techniques in this one: washes, splattering, stenciling, scumbling, glazing and dry brushing.

I keep things. When I die they're gonna wrinkle their eyebrows and wonder Why?
This item is something very useful to me so I feel justified in hanging on to it. As I was making an assemblage called Firenze I kept a 'recipe' of the paint techniques. The piece was a mirror with two side panels that I had to match for color over a period of several weeks. I couldn't pre-mix enough paint so a swatch card with amounts and step sequence helped. Not an exact science in the measuring department, but it worked. And I like the swatch card. When a piece leaves the studio I like to keep a sample. Just a memory of it. Like baby pictures. When it's a commissioned piece I make a small story board to illustrate the colors and items that will be used. It gives my client a better idea of what they will be getting than a description of peachy-pink scumble with coppery splatter and greenish-teal silk yarn.

There are assemblages that don't require a box. Sometimes, old pieces of wood are all that's needed for a support, as in a series of small works featuring family members I've been working on, and in the farm themed piece titled A Flink of Cows.



Paint and stains were applied directly to the wood before (and after) the Xerox transfers and collage papers were adhered.




Another time I'll tell you about the trials and methods of attaching that piece of gloriously rusty exhaust pipe to your artwork. You might want to run out and get that tetanus shot first so you'll be ready!