REDUX: Steve Goes To Collage
The Art Of Avoidance
I originally published this on my birthday in June.
After stumbling down a CollageStack rabbit hole, I decided to create 30 postcards that month. I hit my goal, wrote the below essay…and just kept cutting and gluing (albeit at a more reasonable pace).
I had no idea what to do with these 5 3/4” x 7” creations (although I still like the idea of mailing them to random strangers). It was mostly a way to channel my nervous energy after losing our home in the Eaton Fire. I’ve released albums and published books, but always been a hobbyist when it comes to visual art.
So, I shared a few of them on social media and enjoyed the interactions. I was thrilled when one was used as the cover for Gregory Vaine & the Zephyrs’ Rogue Wave EP. And I was feeling pretty warm and fuzzy when two others were claimed by close friends.
Last month my wife shared a flyer for a new co-op gallery near where our house once stood.
The owner, Ben McGinty, grew up in Altadena and has been very active in the local art scene over the decades. After the fires he converted his antique store into a gallery focused on showing/selling pieces by fire-impacted artists. It seemed like a good fit for what I was doing so—with my wife’s encouragement—I submitted a few collages.
One thing I noticed? Dropping off original artwork feels different than releasing music or publishing books. In those cases, you hold onto the masters and essentially distribute/sell copies. With artwork, you’re selling the master—so that was a new experience that didn’t really register until I was driving away.
This Saturday, Nov. 22, I’ll be attending the soft opening of McGinty’s Gallery at the End of the World.
Twelve of my postcard collages are on display alongside some truly incredible paintings, sculptures, and photographs by other area artists (including McGinty). The official opening—and bigger block party—is Nov. 29 (“Small Business Saturday”).
I’m taking silver linings wherever I can find them these days, and this feels like a fun one. As an old musician friend once said when we finally caught up after more than a decade: “Life will take you funny places.”
I’m happy to report that it has most recently taken me to my first art show. I’ll be hanging out at the gallery for an hour or so this Saturday, 11/22 starting around 11am.
Stop by and say “Sup?” if you’re in LA. Free high fives will be issued.
Remind the algorithm Remember The Lightning exists!
And here’s the original essay from June…
I stumbled onto collage Substack in May and got inspired.
Collage is a hobby I’ve dabbled with since my teens. That’s when I first discovered the joys of making gig flyers and demo covers for my various bands, around the same time a beloved high school drafting teacher put an Exacto knife and T-square in my hands.
In other words, I had motive and means at a young age.
Sporadic, band-related collage was my main focus until my mid-’30s. That’s when babies started appearing in my friend group, so I made a few larger pieces as gifts for these new parents to hang in their nurseries. I also collaged the cover of the second Ken Layne & The Corvids record, Transcontinental. (I was the drummer.)
I got back into collage when our daughter left for college.
I was looking for a way to stay in touch that felt more meaningful than random “Are you still alive?” texts, so I handcrafted postcards and mailed them to her dorm throughout freshman year. Unlike the larger nursery collages (and the Transcontinental cover), these were smaller and came together much quicker.
Those postcards are really all that remain of my previous collage work, most of it destroyed—along with the rest of our possessions—in the Eaton Fire. I didn’t start collaging again until I wrote the final post in the “Vodka Sauce” series.
I followed that reimagining of our old house with a poster-sized collage for our younger daughter’s bedroom, and a strange peacock I submitted to a local art show. (It didn’t make the cut!)
In other words, I was primed to tumble down Substack’s collage rabbit hole.
Inspired by the work I saw others sharing on Notes—and impressed by how much cleaner they were than my often chaotic creations—I decided to give smaller pieces another try. My aim was to see if I have any kind of discernible style. (Jury’s still out…)
That was early on a Saturday evening at the start of June. I had completed 3 down-and-dirty collages by the following night.
Whether or not any of them are worth the scavenged/thrift store materials, dollar store glue sticks and poster boards, or the 1-1.5 hours of my time each one takes is up for debate. What matters to me is how good it felt to completely escape into a series of short-term real world projects instead of zoning out to Britbox mysteries or reading the same page of a book over and over. (My attention span has been almost non-existent since the fires, but slowly improving with time.)
I really like the messiness of collage.
The scraps of paper scattered all over the table and floor; the gummy glue residue on my fingers; and the constant “where the hell did I put the scissors?!” of it all. The whole process, as I approach it, feels tactile and human in a way that a lot of modern life doesn’t.
And then you have a ridiculous postcard-sized object to show for it at the end.
I enjoyed all of it so much, in fact, that I came to the only logical conclusion: I should do one a day in June! So…here we are on the last day of the month, and it’s my birthday to boot (so you’re required to be kind about my manic, monthlong hobby.)
Last year I created a “Double Nickels” playlist that featured one of my favorite songs from every year I’ve been alive. Here’s the track I would likely add for this past year.
This year I made 30 collages in June (well, 31…but I kinda hate one of them).
I attempted to articulate what this experience has been like to my wife last week, but couldn’t find the right words:
Me: This whole project has been a really interesting exercise in…um…
Wife: …avoidance?
Readers, that isn’t the word I was groping for (maybe something more along the lines of “distraction”). At first I felt a little defensive about her word choice, but it only took a few minutes to realize she was totally right. I’ve been keeping myself unbelievably busy since getting laid off and losing our home, even as things slowly get better.
Is that healthy? No. Do I pretend it’s healthy? No point. Can I stop? Not so far, at least not without feeling like I’m about to explode (although my family does occasionally catch me staring intently out our fifth floor window into the middle distance, which I’ll count as “dad downtime”).
The apartment complex hot tub helps. Exercise helps. Switching to decaf earlier in the day definitely helps. Insomnia meds help. And for the past 30 days, collaging has helped—even though I had to set an unreasonable goal to get there.
Somewhere along the way, most likely in my teens, I adopted art (in various forms) as a coping mechanism.
Collage is a fun hobby for me, but still scratches the creative itch that has driven me down various personal and professional paths throughout my life.
And it has been low pressure up until now because very few people see my creations, unlike writing or the various musical groups I’ve been involved with over the years. With this project I decided to push myself by publicly sharing a few of these small collages, although I have no idea what I’ll do with them beyond this post.
Maybe I’ll convince indie pop bands to use them for cover art, con a small local coffee shop into hanging a few up for customers to ignore, mail them to random strangers around the world with Kurt Vonnegut quotes scribbled on the back, or—most likely—turn them into a back-of-the-closet time capsule for our grown children to find when they’re cleaning out my possessions after putting me in an assisted living facility.
Speaking of Vonnegut quotes, this is one that has really stuck with me over the decades. It seems particularly appropriate in this context:
Hope you enjoy this peek inside my manic brain. I’m aiming to make one small collage per week in July. We’ll see what happens after that. So it goes.
Your collages are so cool! Thanks for sharing that, inspiring me to move ahead on a creative project of my own. Love the Vonnegut quote too.
Cool stuff, Steve! Thanks for sharing that....we get to see a fun sideline of yours that doubles and triples as a diversion of sorts, and a creative outlet that's only slightly less noisy to "rehearse" as beating on drums!🥁And, always achingly poignant when you re-visit and stage items where you used to live. I/we (outside of Cali) hear it's been tough getting permits to re-build, and is that your family's goal?