mckenziecoonce

"I have an impulse to turn everything I can into art; it's an impulse I imagine few artists operate without. The need to see ordinary objects in a new and funky way leads many of us to recycling, and for me that means making scraps of newspaper my canvas. I'm drawn to the fine detail of newsprint that makes it so beautifully unique. What, to most people, are simply series of linear qualities in black and white is a field of much more intrigue for me. What I found from intuitively piecing together newspaper articles and headlines are the font variations, the bold and italicized letters, the softly graying and yellowing paper... It's the same attraction we feel when observing artists' sketches; simple line drawings that inexplicably define what exactly it is that we are looking at. This interest of starting with an impossibly un-blank canvas began with a layer-painting assignment in school. I started collaging newspaper free of any direction or intent and completely unaware that this was the beginning of a long exploration in mixed media art for me. This uninhibited practice of art presented me with a sort of new "blank canvas". Rather than painting from a photo or a composition in my sketchbook, I wait to see what my intuition had in store for me that day when collaging. I take note of what types of lines I was drawn to, what sort of articles and images I liked enough to cut out and lay down. I first study the new shapes and lines that were created by my layering of newspaper, ignoring the text, headlines and captions. I then begin to recognize what content is still showing through all of the layering. I respond to these shapes and lines and context simultaneously, ultimately making for a collage of painted objects atop a collage of printed words.

I have recently started exploring the use of other materials, replacing paint with glass tesserae. The process of cutting glass and puzzle-piecing it together on top of the newspaper is far different from using my brush to apply paint, however the same principles are still there. I focus on creating depth with color and texture by not only fitting the tesserae next to each other, but by layering them on top of one another. I'm excited to continue my path in this direction, hopefully successfully merging all three elements together over the next few projects I work on! I will keep you all posted on these endeavors through this blog, so I hope you will continue to check in regularly to see not only the results, but the processes as well."