Thought Orbs: A collage study

Until now I’ve not posted any of my personal work.. I’m in the process of re-organizing my portfolio of collages, photography and the like, which is taking forever. In the meantime I’ll be periodically posting studies in the Portfolio / Laboratory category. A lot of the work here will be experimental studies but I take the approach that as in science, not every experiment is successful, but all are useful.

I’ve been using old National Geographic magazines as a collage resource for years now and have recently started scanning them in for my digital collages and videos. I’ve been cataloging everything I scan for future use and decided to start cutting things up this past weekend. Thought Orbs is what evolved out of a few hours of cutting/pasting/painting. I went through a pile of full page cut outs and began isolating the figures, presenting them almost as a portrait. Next came the orbs that I cut out of the background left behind by the person. A small amount of black paint simply added form where missing.

After staring at these for a while I began to realize that the orbs represented very real thoughts the individual was experiencing. Because they’re removed from the environment, each person either has, will, or is processing the thought seen above their head.. even if it is merely a millisecond as they survey their surroundings. It’s bizarre to think that millions of these little images flash through our minds as we walk around all day. Displaying them isolated like this really lets you focus on one moment in time and possibly even analyze it a little deeper.

You can see them all on Flickr at a larger size if interested. They’re 9″x12″ on recycled paper. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to purchase any of these.