CHRIS FORD OFFICE

Collages

New York NY & Tucson AZ

June 1998—Present

In the mid 1990’s, email emerged as the prevalent form of written communication, thereby adversely impacting the culture of exchanged postcards and hand-written notecards.  While email is certainly efficient when one communicates a single message to multiple recipients, it robs its reader from a higher satisfaction that comes with receiving personal correspondence in physical form. 

 

These early collages are an attempt to enhance the tactile quality of personal communication.  Over several years, various two dimensional materials have been saved, categorized and stored according to subject.  Sources of this material ranges from draft plots of architectural drawings, reading material, visitor guides, brochures, street team handouts, or boarding pass stubs.  All images would be manipulated physically and the final composition would be arranged at a 1:1 scale using spray adhesive or gluesticks.  Other than using a photocopier for an image enlargement or reduction, no digital resources were used in the creation of the actual collages.

 

 

 

 

Each collage was then sent in a 8.5”x11” envelope using US Mail to a person known to the author.  Furthermore, each collage was sent without any further explanation of communicative intent beyond the recipient’s visual reading of the received collage.

 

In June 2011, a new series of collages were executed, using the mixed media of found images and melted crayons.  The collages were arranged on pieces of 1 1/2” extruded polystyrene foam, which in turn were used as media for a Meta-Matic.  As coined by Swiss artist Jean Tinguely, a Meta-Matic can be understood as an “auto-creative art machine.”  The Meta-Matic used for these collages requires the user to insert selected crayons into a hopper, which are then melted onto media fixed to a variable-speed oscillating platform.  The particular Meta-Matic used for this new series was designed and fabricated by Tyson Fiscus.