An artist friend started an informal 'Art College' group to get people to think more freely about their work and to interpret ideas, an opportunity to experiment without pressure- art without the market. The 1st assignment was to take 2 unfinished pieces and combine them into a finished, purely aesthetic & non-functional object.
The latter spec was natural enough for me- my paintings are mostly non-functional- but the idea of repurposing two works-in-progress or two abandoned works as 'raw materials' as someone put it, was not something I had done very often at all.
In my studio I had this 6"x6" collage/painting on wood (based on another painting of mine, made w/a print of a smaller piece..etc). It was grimy and flat and seemed in my eyes a lazy appropriation of my own work. 9"x14" wooden cabinet door I'd primed & painted leaves on, and had mostly used to prop open my window last spring until it fell out the window and broke, but I kept it around because I still thought I'd do something with it.
I repainted parts of each piece then painted them the same color to blend their surfaces and nestled the smaller wooden square within the frame of the cabinet door; it looked simple and incongruous to me, and I thought vaguely of Rosenquist's random pop-art pairings- one creating a narrative for the other.
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Even if that 'narrative' is a visual non sequitur. I had the fun of piloting two different picture planes and seeing where they landed.
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