‘Igneous’ is the title given to our group MA exhibition. I was a bit dubious, I couldn’t see how we all connected with it.
The next day I went to Giant’s Causeway, where lava once had poured into the sea. I still couldn’t see a connection for me.
Today I was walking in the woods and it came to me. I have a section of my composite work that I would like to include in my contribution to our exhibition, but more importantly, link it to my other composite work, dealing with Memories and Time. This work I have been grouping as “Cubist/Surreal, Scattered/Stretched Images” , now I’m thinking of calling them Igneous Composites.
I have started these composites as before, Layers of artifacts and an image which are introduced as layers in Photoshop, then using selections, layer filter effects and blend modes, result in a composite which portrays a jumble of memories. The new twist was to put a 4×4 grid on the composite, make a selection in each of the 16 rectangles. distort and move each selection, which is a part of the memory jumble. Some selections joined others, some drifted further away … Today, combined with the igneous of the title, I was reminded of the earth’s tectonic plates and how they might resemble the selections, or memory fragments. The tectonic plates rest on molten lava, igneous rock. They slowly move, on a geological time scale, and may meet and coalesce with other plates, similar to my selections in PS. The memory fragments move much faster, but it still has taken 50 years to date. I might be stretching the analogy a bit, but it works for me. Even better, it allows me to fit these Igneous composites with the original composites and use them both in our cohort’s exhibition and in my own portfolio and body of work.
Mmm, would it be pushing this analogy too far if I put my ‘Fade’ and ‘Dispersion’ versions in here with the Igneous Composites? I think I might try it, but it might just cause the whole analogy to implode.
