College Dorm Collage
In a quest to fill the white void of wall space that existed in my college dorm, I had the brilliant idea of creating a collage of pieces that would hopefully help make the space feel more like my own. I used six canvases of varying sizes in order to make a variety of art pieces with a cohesive color scheme. This project allowed me to exercise my creativity in a practical way while also having fun creating the composition and pieces individually.
The full collage is shown above, which is comprised of six pieces arranged with a complementary scheme of yellow and purple along with tints, shades, and tones of them. All of these pieces were made with acrylic paint and paint markers. I will go through each piece to explain the inspiration and process of making each.
Starting with the largest pieces of the group, these two are the silhouettes of my home state, Wisconsin, and the state where my college is located, Arizona. For the Wisconsin piece, I created a Swiss cheese pattern because Wisconsin is known as the dairy state. For Arizona, I made an arching ray pattern that is present on the Arizona state flag. These were the first two pieces that I created in the collage and are thus quite connected in terms of the color choices. The purple background of the Wisconsin piece is the same color as the darker purple in the Arizona. Similarly, the yellow background of the Arizona piece is the lighter yellow in the Wisconsin piece.
Moving on to this piece, which is a simple, block landscape of the desert. My favorite part of this piece is the purple sun because it adds such a cool contrast to the piece. I also enjoy the detail of the shadow of the cactus that I added on the left side of all of the pieces of that element. At face value, this is a very simple piece, but it holds a lot of character in simple color choices.
This piece definitely took the most amount of time, but it is most certainly one of my favorites. It depicts a barn quilt design on a much smaller canvas than is traditional. It is difficult to see at face value, but this piece is really an 8x8 grid of squares that are either painted all one color or split diagonally. It is fascinating to me that such a complex pattern can be reduced down to simple rules. I went back and forth many times when deciding which colors would go where, but I ultimately decided on purple in the middle as it looked like the yellow portions were pointing to the middle "pinwheel." This connects back to the state pieces, where Wisconsin is represented by yellow, and Arizona is represented by purple. I then added browns and creams to create contrast, which altogether makes the piece feel very coherent.
Arguably the simplest of the pieces, this is the last of the six that I completed. I had originally intended for it to be something very different- the remnants of which you can see in the background behind the purple checkerboard pattern, but when viewed alongside, I think it adds the right amount of balance to an otherwise yellow-dominated composition. It also gives the viewer's eye a place where there's nothing new to discover- just a simple pattern with hints of yellow poking through in the background.
The last of the pieces was the most fun to make. I have always been a lover of abstract art where you just place colors randomly and call it beautiful, and that was basically my process in creating this piece. I wanted all the colors in all the places :) And even though there isn't necessarily a pattern to the madness, there is still balance. I love seeing the brush strokes and imperfections because every time someone looks at it, they'll notice new details.
