If not collage, then what?
This is the dilemma I’m grappling with as the autumnal days grow shorter and the end of the calendar year begins to peep over the horizon.
Being part of the Peat Appreciation Society (PAS) has presented me with a great opportunity to create new work in pursuit of our collective aim to raise awareness and appreciation of peat. Ordinarily I’d look to abstract, mixed media collage as my creative mode of choice. However, these are no longer ordinary creative times.
Now that I’ve decided to follow my curiosity about exploring a wider range of mediums and disciplines I feel overfaced by the number of options in play and I’m not sure where to begin. All I’ve got to go on so far is the idea of combining different kinds of layers, as a visual metaphor for the slow accumulation of peat. And I’m sorely tempted by a leap into 3D, perhaps something that can be suspended.
In search of an antidote to blank canvas paralysis, I rummage through a stack of collage materials and pull out anything that resonates with the peatland theme. Immediately I’m drawn to examples of gritty, textured mark-making. The near black has a peaty quality that I’m particularly drawn to. I like the idea of making peaty things.
I mix up a small batch of dark, heavily textured paint and splodge it about on some plain paper. I notice that I’m enjoying its earthiness in contrast with the pristine white. I think about slowly decaying organic matter, things that were once alive and vibrant gradually dissolving into darkness. I begin to imagine tall, looming objects wrapped in layers of peaty paper punctuated with glimpses of colour and light.
Returning to reality, I remind myself of the modest size of my workspace and decide to pursue my experiments on a more manageable scale. I spend a few days playing with whatever I have to hand, threading beads, twisting wire, gluing paper and tissue, bringing together contrasting shapes and textures. I still can’t see a way forward but I’m determined to hold open the space for my curiosity to show me the way.
Giving myself permission to embark on this creative exploration has involved a wilful dissolution of identity that I find appealing and terrifying in equal measure. I’m reminded of Frederico García Lorca’s quote, “I’ve often lost myself, in order to find the burn that keeps everything awake”. I want to trust the process, but to do that I’m facing the very real possibility of ending up with nothing to show for it. It feels terrible. I decide to take that as an encouraging sign and plough on.
Today I’ve been bugged by a persistent idea of forming peat into jewellery. I’ve been drawn to how pleasingly anything metallic accentuates all these dark, grainy textures. I could also do with making something more concrete to help me understand my own thinking. If nothing else, it’s a good opportunity for a playful side quest while I reflect on my options.
I spend a few hours cutting rough shapes from card and experimenting with different combinations of peaty textures, beads and metallic finishes. I even dig out some old jewellery findings to turn a couple of pieces into earrings. It’s been fun, but I can’t see how this is going to help me develop my peatland project.
I feel like I’m missing a key ingredient that will enable all my investigations of materials and methods to coalesce into something coherent and substantive. I return to my PAS notes, looking for clues, but revisiting all the fascinating and important science only serves to make me question whether anything I create can do justice to my subject matter. Peat. How can whatever I make help to broker a meaningful connection with peatland?
Reflecting on what drew me to PAS in the first place, I realise that my route into this project has yet to fold in my own emotional bond with the upper moorland environment. It’s a landscape I love, and one with which I’ve formed a powerful, complex connection as a walker and trail runner. I need to find a way to open up my beloved upper moorland world to others. I begin to consider how I might share glimpses of my experience and celebrate how much I’ve come to value places that I once regarded as bleak, empty, uninviting or even hostile.
I pick up the little peat earring with the coppery underlayer and dangle it in the light. I think about the ancient roots of jewellery and head online to explore the ways in which it’s been used to carry deeper symbolic meanings, or been ascribed with powers to ward off evil or bring good luck. I’m not drawn towards the magical route of talismans or amulets, but there’s something about the personal significance of choosing charms for a charm bracelet that feels appropriate to the quality of connection I’m reaching for.
What charms would I choose for a bracelet to symbolise my relationship with the upper moorland?
I’m beginning to see a direction of travel for this project. It takes a few more days of experimentation and purposeful mess-making with cardstock, mica pigments and scrap materials to get from a promising idea to a 45mm square object that finally suggests a viable way forward.
It’s a bit too small, and it doesn’t have a hanging loop, but it’s giving me confidence that I can bring together the right combination of mixed media and construction techniques to make my set of charms.
My test piece represents the contour lines of an OS map, taken from a real location near the footpath across Turley Holes and Higher House Moor above Withens Clough Reservoir. It’s a MoorLIFE project site, which seems a fitting place to start. I’ve chosen map contours to symbolise both the challenge of the climb and the profound sense of inner calm that I gain from heading up onto the tops.
I hold it in my palm and realise that making the charms is firing my curiosity to understand more about the dialogue between this peatland landscape and my internal world. At this point I decide that while I make the set I’m going to create a piece of writing for each charm, using my chosen objects as prompts for deeper reflection on places and experiences that are precious to me.
The final version of my contours charm, its companions and the creative writing that responds to them can be found on my ‘Peatland charm bracelet‘ project page. At time of writing I think I’m going to make a set of eight, but who knows how many might insist on muscling their way into the action.
I’m fascinated by how following my curiosity has carried forward my early ideas about layers, 3D and suspension to answer the all-important question “if not collage, then what?” in a totally unexpected way.
The process has resulted in a departure from anything I’ve made before, opening up space to reconfigure existing skills and hone some new ones. As the new year approaches I’m pleased to have taken my first steps along a more permissive creative path.
