Collages

From time to time when I visit my friends in New York City, I'll do some music with them. Yes people, you heard it here, I sing in a band. Well, I'd like to say that's just what I do, but really, when they live in NYC and I live in NH, it makes it difficult, but we do have a lot of fun when we get together and jam or whatnot. At one point we were discussing putting together an EP of some of the songs we had written. I, being the artsy one, was more obsessed with making album art than I was with making music.

I had been living with these guys for a Summer while I had an internship in the area. The job itself was a little boring, and I'd be sitting there all day thinking about the album art for this CD. Seeing as all I had was a laptop and no scanner, paper or Wacom tablet, I started taking images off of the internet and putting together collages using Photoshop. I made about six pictures, one for each song we had written, and for a first attempt at collage, I was pretty happy with the results.The above image, titled "Healer", was my personal favorite... I only wish the song had been decent enough to do the drawing justice.

The first collage I put together was for a song called "Civil War"... which never progressed past lyrics, unfortunately. It was maybe the weaker of the bunch, but it was, again, a first attempt at collages. Appropriate that it'd be the weakest however, since it had no recorded song to really compliment:


"In The Mystery..." was a song about a fall from grace and finding hope in the mystery that God can come across as when we're at our lowest. The song itself originated as a REALLY cheesy piano ballad, which we still make fun of (ruthlessly) to this day. Seriously, dudes aren't supposed to write songs that sound like Celine Dion... ever. We later revisited it and made it one of our strongest pieces yet. But this blog isn't about music. It's about art. So here's the collage:


"Arbitrary Sanctuary" is about the idea of fate verses free will and how both can either be sadly depressing or a blessing in disguise. The collage depicts a fetus floating between an angelic and a demonic army. The idea behind this image can be left open to interpretation, but the main idea was to further the idea of being born into one reality or the next by way of fate:


"The Gospel of St. Me" is really just about my life's journey as a Christian, a Gospel being the written experience of those who lived with Christ. Hence, anyone walking in faith who chooses to tell their story is essentially writing their own Gospel:

These last two are basically the same concept. "Arachnid" and "Hidden Huntress" are both about a girl. Huntress being about a beast in disguise, Arachnid being about black widow poisoning men with euphoria while she slowly devours them... yeah, kind of morbid, but I think we've all been there...

In any case, collages can be an interesting medium, though not really my perfered method of art. Really, the only time I find myself doing this sort of work is when I am unable to grab a pencil and paper and scan images. I like to work with my hands, not a mouse...

Goodnight Cleveland!
~ Mark