Today I have been meditating on John Cage writings. This morning I read a bit of Silence before heading out the door.

here are some of his writings that have resonated with me today.

I believe that the use of noise

Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at fifty miles per hour. Static between the stations. Rain. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them not as sound effects but as musical instruments.

“Does one have something and then proceed to add another thing or does one have something; move into it; occupy it; divide it; make the best one can of it?”

“I have nothing to say / and I am saying it / and that is poetry / as I needed it” –John Cage

The last two and a half years I have been extremely disciplined in my practice.  I wake used to wake up every morning and make my collage work, then I switched, now I work when I get home from my “job” .   I stay up late in my studio sometimes till 2 am, cutting and gluing and talking with my girlfriend. We listen to music, smoke an occasional cigarette, the whole thing is really relaxing.

The other day I was not in my studio, instead I was up in the kitchen trying to make something to eat.  It was the most difficult thing, I couldn’t find the knives, couldn’t remember to chop something, I was a mess in the kitchen, I went down to my studio and everything seemed to work so much easier for me.  The knives I knew were they were, I knew how to cut with them, to work with my materials, I knew where every image in my huge stack of magazines and photo copies hide in their piles when it came time to retrieve them.   I have worked hard to become this comfortable in my practice, to tune my sight and my hand to accomplish more and more accurately the callings to create that I see and hear daily.  The more I tune into this, the more I practice, the more I am fed with ideas, and the more I expect myself to exceed my potential.

I told a friend of mine the other day, that I want to be the best. He asked me what being the best meant, because it’s entirely subjective,  but really, I am not so much interested in being better than other people, but chewing away slowly to get closer and closer to that expression of who I actually am.  If incense were music

Incenso Fosse Música : Paulo Leminski

isso de querer
ser exatamente aquilo
que a gente é
ainda vai
nos levar além

this of wanting
to be exactly that
which we are
is bound to
take us beyond

I have found the more I just put my head down and work, develop my work, and put away all the other voices and BS that comes with that WANT of wanting to be an artist, that I have a much clearer way of being me as an artist.   Put your head down and work, don’t worry about it, the work will take you places, but first have faith in it, work it nurture it, grow with it.  I used to expect my work to take me places and to give me things like money, fame, sex and power. It was like a had a beautiful person in my life that loved me more than anything in the world, and she was right in the room with me and all I could say is ‘WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO FOR ME ?’  I now know, that it is, what am I going to do for my art.

1.

an object regarded with awe as being the embodiment or habitation of a potent spirit or as having magical potency.

2.

any object, idea, etc., eliciting unquestioning reverence, respect, or devotion: to make a fetish of high grades.

As digital photography has pushed out film photography, we are seeing the fetishism of film photography. It always happens when I technology changes. One of the things that really stand out to me is when leather dash boards and seats were replaced by vinyl and plastic.  They little fake leather stitching was added to make it appear as if it was leather, even though we knew it was not leather.  Or how about the e-books, and how they make the digital pages appear as paper turning, no need for that, but yet it exists.  So we must have a need to resist adaptations in technology.

I see some of this fetishism in some collage artists, who either refuse to use digital technology, or work to make their digital collages look like they were made with paper.   Recently I have discovered a school of collage in which the artists work to make their collages look like they could have only been made digitally, while they only use scissors and glue to make their creations.   In Marjorie Perloff’s book The Futurists Moment, Perloff writes

” Perloff traces the word “collage” throughout centuries around the world.  This mode was practiced in twelfth-century Japan, manifesting in pasted papers, it appears in the form of Mexican feather mosaics and it appears in the way Russian artists represent religious icons (with jewels, gems, pearls, etc.).  Perloff defines “collage” through the French word “coller,” which: “refers literally to “pasting, sticking, or gluing,” as in the application of wallpaper” (46).  The Futurist collage, as mentioned earlier, is different.  Perloff presents a different definition of collage, which she teases out from Marinetti’s manifestos—a series of works that are a collage in themselves. Marinetti argues: “the earth shrunk by speed.”  Perloff elaborates: “by new means of communication, transportation, and information, demands a wholly new verbal art, one that can express ‘the complete renewal of human sensibility about by the great discoveries of science’”(57).  The shrinking of the world also demanded new visual art.  The collapse of space and relationships between objects in a collage represents the way in which technology shrunk the world.  Other techniques such as bold colors, fragmentation, representation of sound (“so shrill a torrent of spectacle and noise” [63]).”

I don’t think that contemporary photography is challenging photography; I rarely see a photo that has that certain thing in it that compels me. Its either snap shot photographer that is to pass as “high art” or process driven photographer that is to offer up the fetish of what once was, and often is viewed as being superior to the new.  Or the is the vapid and boring fashion photography with pouty girls and men in over priced clothes.   We also get a chance to see the pornographic images, which repeat endlessly the same image. We also get to see a mix of all of the above into a clever version of process photos and pouty models with snap shot element.   It’s not that the photos are bad, or that they are good. The photos lack a poetry to them, to me the are photo after photo borrowing off of trend after trend, in hopes of selling the photo for a magazine, or someone’s home, or a vain woman might purchase her own photo to hang in her home a sensual memento.

What is photography doing that is new? How is it keeping pace with technology?  It’s why I say that Collage is the new photography, Photoshop and mass printing have made this possible, leave  the production of images for the sake of collage, borrow heavily from those that are blinded with the boredom and endless repetition of girls in bikinis or girls staring blankly and pouting into the camera.  But it’s our job to take risks, to undo the old guard, to throw out nostalgia, to take old ideas and let the speed of the internet and today’s technology propel our ideas and our conversations with each as artists into new directions.

I read this today and it has given me further fuel to keep working on my daily practice, to not rest on what I have done, or accept pats on the back or even criticism, but to merely put my head down and work.  The bridges that I cross will be the ones I build on my own..

There is a vitality,
a life force,
a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique.

And If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.
The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine
how good it is
nor how valuable it is
nor how it compares with other expressions.

It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly
to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate YOU.

Keep the channel open…
No artist is pleased…

There is no satisfaction whatever at anytime
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction
a blessed unrest that keeps us marching
and makes “us” MORE alive than the others.

Martha Graham
( – a letter to Agnes De Mille-)

“The purpose of the papier colle’ was to give the idea that different textures can enter into a composition to become the reality in the painting that competes with the reality in nature. We tried to get rid of “trompe l’oeil” to find a “trompe l’esprit.”…If a piece of newspaper can become a bottle, that gives us something to think about in connection with both newspapers and bottles, too. This displaced object has entered a universe from which it was not made and where it retains, in a measure, its strangeness. And this strangeness was what we wanted to make people think about because we were quite aware that our world was becoming very strange and not exactly reassuring.”

–Pablo Picasso

In the dark sky there
are constellations, all of them
erotic and they break open
the streets
The streets exceed the house
On occasion the body exceeds
the self
Everyday someone replaces someone and
someone’s mother is sad so
as to exceed
The bed is a popular
enclosure from which to depart
Outside the stars are stunning
–touching
It is a question of
scale
It is erotic when parts
exceed their scale

If you would like to purchase any of the prints below, please contact me at

peter.yumi at gmail.com

But look at this matter in other lights
a man might rather have done than to have left undone
after disposing of the embalmed head
Was there ever such unconsciousness?
contracted, that definition is the result of expanded meditation
preparations of it (thoughts) brought immense prices. It was also distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies,
thick vapor came from his mouth in quick and constant puffs
only there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest wrinkles (thoughts)

This soothing savage had redeemed it.

Exercise more
Sleep in
Ask more questions
Stop giving answers
Learn new songs to play on my guitar
Sing more ( it’s yoga for the inside of the body- Stephen Colbert)
Write about other artist MORE
Interview artists
Learn to bbq Ribs
Learn to smoke meat
Set up my wood shop
Fix my girlfriends car
Create a flower garden for my girlfriend
Be patient when I am trying to learn to speak Portuguese with her.
Love more

This is a list of my favorite collages of 2011. There are hundreds more that I would like to include in the list. I picked these collage for a number of reason, some because they influenced my work, some because they are just gorgeous and deserve to be seen by as many people as possible and some I picked because they are funny and made me laugh

NUMBER 10
Prayer Time : Nicholas Lockyer this guys work is just poetic and dream like. I emailed him a few months ago and asked if I could put some of his collage on my Collage Fancy page. I still need to do so, I have been neglecting collage fancy.

Number 9 Nick Sitton

This work is really influencing my current work. I really love how simple the process is but they create complicated forms and shapes. WONDERRFUL

Number 8 Vanessa Lamounier de Assis

Vanessa’s work is beyond amazing. I look at her flickr page often, sometimes waiting for her to post new work. She is truly a remarkable talent.

Number 7 Diego Gravinese

I really was blown away by the sheer raw power of these collages. So simple of a process but a beautiful poetry exists from the selection of images.

Number 6 Lewis Minor

I can’t say anything but GORGEOUS ! I love this work.

Number 5 DECK STYLE

This KILLS

Number 4 Derrick Tyson

Bizzare and wonderful use of abstraction of form.. check out more of his stuff it really is remarkable.

Number 3 Mumuri

This collage was a real stand out for me when I first saw it and made the rounds in my email with several other collage artists I know..

Number 2 Otto Magnus

He has been one of my favorite collage artists over the past year, his work is absolutely wonderful, what I like about his flickr page is that he is not afraid to show is process and his progress. He is really a dedicated artist and is always commenting on others work and really making more work than other artists I know..

Number 1 lucas chimello simões

This work continues to inform my work every single day I work. I am constantly looking at his process. If you look through his flickr page he has a few photos where he shows you how he made these truly unique and amazing collage.. I suggest you go back in time to his very first photo that he posted on flickr and then you really get a chance to see how his style developed into what he is doing today..