The Happy Medium

The Collective Unconscious 
Originally uploaded by patti_lorenzo-encarnacion

This was my very first "automatic" collage which was an assignment for a collage class I was taking at SAIC. It was made on fiberglass screen attached to canvas stretchers. The assignment was to create a collage that was not less than four square feet. (These are only two panels of a triptych) I decided to make a screen out of..well..screen. This is where my love affair with wild collages began. I sat in front of the screen, squeezing paint out of tubes right onto the scraps of gift tissue and slapping them from the back of the screen towards the front to achieve a "quilted" effect. I'm proud to say I didn't even use a palette so I did not waste any paint. Notice the scraps of paper towel with paint smears that I used to wipe my brushes with. I then started squeezing the paint directly on the screen and then literally slapping the gift tissue onto the globs. Looking back now, it is so stereotypical of an abstract expressionist.

Much as I enjoyed the process, I could not explain my purpose until I learned about the Jungian concept of the "collective unconscious". Until that discovery, this piece was untitled. If I could go back to the day I presented my piece, knowing what I know now, my professor would've probably had more to say about my work than "precious".  I would've probably started a new discussion, a new movement, and a new course to study. Wouldn't that have been great? I remember having those dreams and delusions of grandeur. It makes me wonder now if getting outside the boundaries of "normal" art is still a dream of mine, or is it a result of all my years of being the poster child for Murphy's Law. Is it my past or my future that helps me create these surreal images? Maybe the subconscious purpose of the triptych is to concretize the past, present, and the future.   Perhaps, I am in the center of all this organized chaos. Perhaps, I am more centered than I think.