art for the trash

i forgot to cancel this website and also i made some collages

[i’m making art for the internet about art for the trash which is, in itself, also art for the trash]

Hi. this is my website. i talked a lot last year about writing a blog, and i did not do that. i was going to write about going to a fan convention in my area and all my profound sociological observations. but i chickened out. what does that say about me? whatever. doesn’t matter. what matters is apparently i set the site up with auto-renew and now i have this website for a whole ‘nother year. and i’ll just post whatever i want. because why not? nothing is real and life is short. i have all these thoughts in my head and nowhere to throw them. plus, i sound better in print than i do irl.

anyway, something i’ve been doing lately is collaging. normally, i would not consider myself a visual artist. or even particularly creative, if i’m honest. my strengths are strictly verbal and logical (my mom thinks its because my parents had me reading so young ((although my mom also tells a story about how i would “read along” with her while she read me Hop on Pop (((i would say “hop!”))), and i’m realizing all these years later i just had good pattern recognition))), or so i thought, but me thinking that done gone and made itself a self-fulfilling prophecy. so, after hoarding all my shiny pretties and magazines and weird books and fancy napkins that i’ve bought or kept out of guilt because they were too pretty to throw away, i told myself i was making “art for the trash.” i had a tiny canvas and a bunch of things i could stick on it. it was going to be trash eventually; what if it got a makeover at my house beforehand? that gave me permission to make bad art. to try something new and not have to be good at it. which, like, wah wah. wittle baby’s expectations for herself are too high. nothing matters. fear of shame is holding me back. let’s show the internet the art we made.

this first one (none of these are named, by the way, but i can tell you what i named them in my “Collage Scans” folder ((ok you caught me i guess they would technically be named in that case, but my counter to that is “that’s the image file, not the image itself, dummy”))) i named “Solutions Police Department,” and i named it that about twenty minutes ago, even though i made these dudes* (collages, nongendered) months ago.

do you want to know what everything is and where it’s from? do people care about that and want to know that kind of thing? i honestly don’t know. however, it is important for you to know that the silvery area where that man’s head used to be, that’s actually reflective material. you can see your own face in that man’s place. fuckin deep if i do say so myself.

this next one is named “gun court” because it’s got the words “gun court” in it.

whaddya think about that? no plan for this one really. just did what felt good. trying to train myself to underthink things sometimes.

and then there’s this one that is called “don’t lose ur head” (inside joke but don’t worry you’ll get it when you see it in a second lol).

i just kept seeing lines of people as i was gathering ideas. people lined up, waiting or marching. dizzying rows and rows of people, which of course is not reflected in the final piece since these (amazing, by the way ((shoutout to the late GEO magazine))) photographs stretch across several glossy magazine pages and i have 5×7 canvas panels from walmart. one of the only collage techniques i know is cutting out someone’s head and replacing it with something else, but thankfully, it’s fully legal for me to be formulaic in the comfort of my own home. oh, and that’s some more mirror paper behind the flamingo. my scanner can’t really pick that up. anyway, that’s the last one i’ve made since i’ve started doing this. but i really enjoy the process.

thanks for letting me come onto the internet and show you these. it’s not important to me if you like what i make or think it’s good, but i think it’s important for me to make it, if that makes sense. and to my dismay, i don’t exist in a vacuum, so i’m putting myself out there to be seen even though i hate to be seen. so actually, i am very strong and brave for starting this website, thank you very much.

[ps: if i look at this too long, i’ll cringe so hard that i die; pls give me some grace for this first post]