Splashdown! -- my contribution to Postal Collage Project #13, sponsored by Berkeley Commonplace Round Table Collaboration.


The Postal Collage Project is an annual, six-month, six-stage, global mail-art collaboration.

TBD, 2023, Mixed media on 350 lb., acid-free, 100% cotton paper, 8" x 6"


I begin with a blind contour drawing of crumpled tissue paper and cat toys on my studio floor. Blind contour drawing always presents me with a matrix of line and shape that I did not, could not, anticipate. This fits with my general philosophy of “make | do”, and “found, not sought” whether it’s improvisational cooking or making found-object sculpture.


After sifting through boxes of paper, fabric, and thingamajigs, I select materials I’m drawn to—coffee-stained tissue, rust-colored drawing, screening, wire, paste jewel—and begin to place them. I find myself constrained by the boundaries I have laid down in the drawing. I surrender to that impulse. Sort of. 

TBD, 2024, Mixed media, 8" x 6"

Four months later, this is the collage I receive back from my four collaborators.

Splashdown!, 2024, Mixed media, 8" x 6"

Thanks to all my collaborators for adding color, texture, form and concept to my starter collage. Although I eliminated and added quite a bit, each person's contribution triggered new ideas as I discovered the story embedded in the work. I titled it Splashdown! because the man in a "space suit" seems to have landed in a strange new world, a blue "parachute" trailing far behind him.