(on) Margins
A couple weeks ago Caroline finished Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit and put it on my bedside table saying something along the lines of "this is great, and she writes a bit about collage in it." Solnit's not a hard sell in this house, but it stayed unread until last night. I jumped right to her "Some Uses of Edges" chapter, both because of the name and because that's where she wrote about collage in general and specifically about artist Wallace Berman.
Two quotes jumped out at me, not necessarily connected, but also not not connected.
““I went home and thought about the value of margins.”
”Collage is literally a border art...””
Regular readers' ears may perk up at the mentions of "edges" as I've written about them before, including in this collection of work from earlier this year. Whenever I read "margins", I'm immediately reminded of this article by Craig Mod (who gets a mention in the edges essay above).
““A book with proper margins says a number of things...We respect you, Dear Reader, and also you Dear Author, and you, too, Dear Book.”
”...[proper margins say] we gave a shit. Giving a shit does not require capital, simply attention humility & diligence. Giving a shit is the best feeling you can imbue craft with.”
”No book begins life aspiring to bad margins...””
Margins in the context of book-making have a specific meaning, which I don't want to ignore but for my purposes, I think about margins as being edges - or more precisely the relationship of two or more edges to each other. Margins contain text (or images) inside a page and are visibly manifest by comparing the edge of the page to the implied edge of a block of type. A standard book page has four main margins, relating to the top, bottom, left, and right sides of the page. Now imagine instead of text, an image that is maybe framed by a matte and set inside its own margins. These margins talk to both the image and to the page. That is a lot of balancing, and that’s where the fun is.
“Margins make collage a viable art form.”
What do margins mean in collage? Margins make collage a viable art form. Margins separate, whereas collage combines. If there were no margins, collage would make no sense.
I went to the studio on Friday with all this in my head, made some work and dug up some old work that feels like it's playing in the same sandbox. The idea I started working with was "what if I built up a page or canvas out of nothing more than margins taken from old books."
“I love margins! Look at all these margins"!”
As an idea it's fine enough and I think it'll stay in rotation for a while, but this image (IMHO) suffers from being a first draft rather than being a fully worked-out concept. Starting the image I was pretty sure I hadn't given myself enough time to digest what I was thinking about and that seems clear in the work. This image literally says, "margins! I love margins! Here are some margins!" I stand by it as a draft, though it's not in & of itself a great work.
Circa 2020, unknowingly working with margins
This older image is much more interesting. I made this in 2020 or 2021 (it's unfortunately undated) and it has vibes of this other collage from 2021.
2021, related to, but not explicity about, margins.
These are working mostly because they’re formally strong. In this case, not being driven by “a concept” I was able to work with the materials as materials and built some work that is internally cohesive and gives the “meaning making” over to the viewer. This is, IMHO, where my best work comes from.
Saturday I went to the Paper Positions show in Berlin. I expected to enjoy it, but was honestly blown away by the work there. Some of which inspired me to go back to the studio, some of which made me want to pick up a new vocation because I felt so outclassed. This is, I think, the best possible reaction to an art show. I should both be excited to make more work, and be unsure that it’s worth my time. It’s out of this quasi-existential threat that we step up to the plate. I may write about some of the other artists later, but the one who most completely blew my mind was Eiko Borcherding. He does two things incredibly well. One is drawing and the other is how he builds his pages up out of old paper.
With both margins and his work in mind, I had to go back to the studio on Sunday to build some pages. The five pages below are the result (click to enlarge).
Building them, I imagined them all as foundations for something - be it a collage, or a drawing (copying is how one learns) - but a couple of these work as they are. Or at least mostly work. Today isn’t a studio day. I’m back later in the week. It’ll be interesting to see how much I like these and what I’ll do with them next.
Essentially, like Rebecca Solnit, I need to [go to the studio and] think about the value of margins.