A little while ago I shared pictures of some of my mixed media collages – I love playing with textures, found objects, paints and ephemera, sometimes I feel like a small child who doesn’t put one toy away before playing with something new – a chaotic method perhaps but it is then that the most creative combinations can occur.
I was delighted when Ann reached out after seeing my posts to ask if I could make one for her – to capture precious family memories of Cornwall, of days spent by the river, exploring rock pools and celebrating the wood behind a family home.
She had a postcard of a well loved beach, I was able to help source other vintage ephemera including coins with the appropriate birth year, a linen backed map of the area and a photograph of a gorgeous sailing ship on the same stretch of river. Ann’s family who still live in the area went for a walk to collect sea glass, shells, pottery and pebbles while I rummaged through my collection of vintage collectors cards, threads and salvaged beads.
As always with these works I start with the story – so a lovely hour was spent drinking tea and talking about what memories were most important and which elements of my work Ann had been drawn to. We played with some initial layout ideas together and then I headed home to work.
The piece grew organically – it was soon clear that the hoop we had initially selected wouldn’t be large enough for everything that we wanted to include. A rook was an essential reference for the woods behind the family home – but when I looked through my donor bird books all the illustrations were somewhat lacklustre – for some reason the corvid family get rather dull small black and white images that don’t do justice to the depth and range of colours in their feathers – they would have been lost in a larger collage so the only option was of course to draw one.
That the foreground was to include shells and stones we knew from the start – but a second conversation about rock pooling memories led to the inclusion of seaweed, and a special request for sea anemones. These were a little bit of a puzzler, but my embroidery thread collection came to the rescue and after researching the seaweed species in the area I was able to use needle lace techniques to replicate them, and after playing with my crochet hooks for a while I was even able to create 3D sea anemones. I loved how the collage began to extend beyond the confines of the hoop.
Salvaged beads and threads helped to build the layers – I even took delivery of the finest beading needle I have ever owned – so thin it was almost impossible to thread it with a single strand of cotton. I managed however, and with it was able to stitch through the smallest of holes in the whorl of a shell. There is no glue used in my collages, everything is held in place with thread and beads – even the two vintage coins are secured using a bezel created from felt and beads.
As the collage was nearing completion a request came in to include a favourite song – we discussed various options – could the lyrics be stitched into the sand perhaps, and then while leafing through my supplies my eye caught the back of the map – a lovely mellow cream linen. A quick experiment with an extra fine pen and I had the answer – the musical score carefully copied out onto the linen and sitting on the foreshore.
Where the tone of the elements didn’t quite sit well together – the leaves from the collectors cards, the postcard etc – I used watercolours, colouring pencils, coloured threads and beads to blend them into a more pleasing combination.
Once everything was completed to both my and Ann’s satisfaction the back of the work was secured and finished with a large circle of felt handstitched in place. If future generations ever want to remove the collage from the hoop and frame it in a different manner I have made sure to leave enough extra fabric to facilitate this. But with the felt in place the reverse is protected and smooth ready to be hung.
If you’d like your own custom collage to celebrate a special place or occasion, please do get in touch. I genuinely love working on these!