On My Way

So far, I've been experimenting with a few ideas and working on figuring out the details of my project. When I started, I thought of making long, horizontal panels for my composition, but realized that for the expedition, it would be hard to frame them. 16x20 is one of the largest sizes of standard frames, and after going and pricing a few and seeing if I can find 8 to 10 of them, I may consider using that size. I am aware that this is much smaller than what I had originally planned, but at the same time, I really want to make a lot of them so that I can draw a multitude of writers. Since my message is more about the image, by making them slightly smaller will give me more opportunities for connection with my audience. This also gives me the chance to make a few pieces and if some don't work, I an make sure my best art will be shown.

As for other experiments, I tested a few different gluing solutions to figure out which would work best. Acrylic medium gets rid of the shiny texture of the receipts as well as makes the burned areas (which are black) turn gray. Since Elmer's glue flattens the paper, it too takes away some of the shine, but it stays black. Glue stick seems to be my best choice because not only can the sparkles still be found pretty easily, the crinkled texture stays in tact as well as the boldness of the black. I made some gradients to see how I may use the paper, and found that not only can I use the difference between variations of burned marks, but also using text or not. Many of the receipts use different fonts or thickness of letters, and I can easily use these to my advantage. I feel this would also bring out the issue of materialization and illustrate that what we buy supposedly marks who we are.