“Let us use what we find” (Post 37)

(A modified extract from a document I wrote in October 2017, explaining my ‘Faces in the Crowd’ collage collection.)

I did a series of 40 collages during my stay in Wuhan. I will use one from the “D-collection” here as an example. Let me explain the techniques I used and the media I employed. In China, (I understood) the traditional Chinese watercolour paintings are done on a thin paper and then they are mounted on special decorative scrolls. In one of these shops I discovered such beautiful handmade paper. I saw bright red paper with golden spots, orange paper with golden spots and I saw real leaves inside a very thin white paper, just to mention a few. It became almost impossible to choose, but I did. I wanted to use these as a kind of halo effect around the heads of my friends, so I mounted the portraits onto these wonderful papers.

The first step was: I printed out the photographs of these people and then secured it with spray-on glue on a harder board and then I made glue outlines and I then continued to roll glue prints using a water-based ink when the glue had dried. I even rolled some prints over the beautiful “Chinese paper”. As you can see, I used the cigarette boxes – given to me for free by the tobacco stores – in the background, and they could represent the city I suppose. I put three playing cards on each art work because I saw playing cards everywhere in the streets. I picked up a whole pack which was strewn all along the pavement. I used large Superman or hero stickers in most of these works – which one shop owner gave to me free of charge, simply because they were old and they were not moving off the shelves – these large stickers represent the courage I saw in these people. Many of the people portrayed here came to visit me and they allowed me to see glimpses of Chinese life through their eyes.

Like so many things we do, we never know where it would all lead to and how the final product would look, well I struggled a bit with what exactly I should do with the faces, because I did not want to overwork them and I did not want to leave them as they were. So, I decided to add the thin paper glitter-line between the two different prints to add a focal point and then I used oil pastels to add a sense of reality or a personal touch to each portrait. I used the split-image on the faces, because I really enjoyed the elusiveness of the print and the mystery it created; I deliberately wanted to use the different kinds of paper I had discovered.

The part on which I did the oil pastel work is a sturdier paper which has a coarse grain and it took the oil pastel beautifully. On a “deeper” note one can say that perhaps I did this two-tone effect on the faces, because it could symbolize my realization that there is definitely more to each personality which I did not discover, but I saw enough to believe that they are wonderful people and they had the courage to show me that they are not just Faces in the Crowd, but indeed friends and acquaintances to treasure. My interactions with them anchored me and gave me a very important measure of understanding for Chinese society and their motives. The Faces in the Crowd were replaced with Faces in my Heart.