Presentation

Presentation, when the search is completed with a new understanding enabling the person to explain his or her learning to others or in someway put the learning to use. (Kuhlthau)

I spent the morning testing out my new knowledge of frottage and decollage. It gave me new insight into these techniques to apply them firsthand. I like making art because I find it the manual process gives time for reflection on the concepts I am trying to express. It is interesting that collage could be a metaphor for the information inquiry process: taking existing material and constructing further or new meaning out of it.

There are all sorts of textural possibilities to use for frottage. I could not find much natural wood grain, such as Ernst used, but I tried a woven basket, pieces of lace, a wooden box, and decorative fixtures on my furniture. The result I liked the best was from a low relief Indian plate:

Ganesh frottage

Using frottage to reproduce the image from the plate added a sense of mystery and increased the exoticism of the Hindu god to me. I also noticed the elements of chance that would have appealed to the Surrealists. The texture was not reproduced perfectly or completely consistently, adding intriguing ambiguous variations.

Decollage was a little more difficult to produce. There was even more of an element of chance in the result of peeling away layers of paper. I did like the combination of construction and destruction and the way the process changed the original meaning of the components. I would like to continue to experiment with this technique.

I made one piece that ended up with an abstract, formal effect. The second one was inspired by Rotella's use of movie posters.

Green and orange decollage

Movie poster decollage