Collage Art Work

I walked into Goodwill right after the clerk had racked about 7 or 8 men's cotton size 3XLarge shirts. They were tropical prints, nice firm cottons and were there for me to buy.  A 3XLarge shirt has a lot of fabric.  I generally don't need any fabric but when I see a bargain that could be a future project, I'll buy it.  These shirts were definitely bargains.  

Following the quilt I finished this week, I decided to stay on that track and make a few more in the same style.  I would like to have some very nice quilts for my upcoming art markets.

Today I was able to start deconstructing the shirts.  It's a fun process of tearing the shirts so the seams and few miscellaneous unusable pieces are left.  

Because I cannot stand to see anything go to waste,  I use as much of the shirt's skeleton as possible.  

For my art collage work, it's all about the frayed edges, the collection of prints and textures and the layering of pieces.  I do very close, tight stitching to anchor pieces to a sturdy surface.  It's very meditative and once I start, I can get quite involved with feeling how the fabrics work.  I like to include pieces and parts that would normally be tossed out.  I think they give my artwork depth that a plain piece of fabric doesn't offer.

The shirts after the major usable fabric has been harvested for large quilts:

This art collage work has already been started.  It currently has 2 long bands, one is predominantly blue and the other is predominantly orange. The third band will return to blue with some green accents.

The pictures, while large, have very small pieces.  I like to incorporate 'word' fabrics when I find them.  I feel like they give the piece a journal quality that I think is appealing.

My intention is to develop a body of work such as this that can be presented to small/large businesses for their office space walls.

I'll share more pictures as the piece progresses.  It's interesting to me to scroll through the pictures and identify the fabric sources.  For many years, I mentally put squares and shapes together in my head.  I couldn't walk down the sidewalk without arranging the cracks in the pavement.  I am finally at a place in my artistic journey where I can interpret that struggle in fabric, the one medium that I know extremely well.