Trash: The Golden Garbage Process Book

Trash*

*Or The Story of Creating Loosely Art Nouveau Inspired Compositions Mostly Made from Candy Wrappers, Paper Scraps, and Pieces of Broken Curtains

Rachel Bender

Contents Foreword

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Week 1: Visual and Textual Research

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Week 2: Compositional Strategies (Or 20 Headaches Later)

7–9

Week 3: Expand and Explore

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Week 4: All Spread Out

12–15

Week 5: Titles, and Lettering, and Covers (Oh My!)

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Week 6: Printing for Dummies

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Week 7: Final Zine!

19–24

Final Thoughts

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This process book is dedicated to my mom, Laura. Without her listening to me whine on the phone and telling me I would finish my project, I might have never finished this project.

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Foreword If you’re reading this, you’re in for a treat. See, if there’s one thing I love, it’s talking about my work process.

With this particular project, an Art Nouveau inspired zine, I struggled immensely for the majority of the time. I was probably being a bit whiny, frankly. I wanted it to be great and I had trouble getting it there because Art Nouveau is really not my style. (Also I’m really not great at drawing curves or people, but that’s a story for another time.) On the end, I found a way to create a zine that embodied qualities I strive to have in all my work: bold colors, minimal hand drawing, relatively inexpensive materials, interesting layering, complexity, and above all, humor.

I received some good advice while doing this project from my teacher. While I was getting a critique from her for the last time before I turned in my physical zine, she said something along the lines of that I should find ways to make art school work for me, and that I should always try to make projects work to my advantage. It was this statement that helped inspire the final phase of my book and create a batch of compositions and spreads which brought the zine to a place where it really felt like it was my work.

I think there’s something to be said for taking a project with seemingly rigid parameters and finding ways to make it your own. In the end, you don’t want your work to look or feel like anyone else’s, you want it to be like you.

This is my process of creating a collection of work that I’m now actually proud to say I completed.

Enjoy!

xo, Rachel

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Week 1: Visual and Textual Research I really did not know anything about the Art Nouveau movement when I was assigned my topic for creating a zine. I could not picture in my head what any of the famous works looked like, nor the color or how widely it was embraced. I could only assume that it was very French, but was intrigued when I learned it was a much broader movement. I knew right away I loved the simplicity of the era’s poster design and the intense complexity of the architecture. My research helped me to clarify some of the particulars of the history.

The Art Nouveau movement occurred from 1890 until about 1914 at a time of great change in how the world was making and consuming products. Artists lamented the loss of craft and beauty in mass produced objects. Art Nouveau makers strived to bring back these elements into every aspect of life. But rather than fight the technology, they used it to their advantage. It was an encompassing, or “‘total’ art style,” its principles expressed in an incredibly large array of mediums. Inspired by the curves and textures of the natural world, Examples of Art Nouveau work can be found in architecture, paintings, posters, textiles and even household items such as cigarette cases and lamps.

The exact history or starting point of Art Nouveau is vague, as are its exact words for its manifesto. Its end came at the beginning of WWI as the more ornate and opulent style was overtaken by the sleeker, more practically utilitarian Art Deco movement.

Mediums used incuded oil painting, lithographs, glass, architecture, jewelry, and everyday objects. Compositonal strategies were usually axial and bilateral. Recurring symbols, imagery and subject matter inspiration from natural forms, not necessarily beautiful (ex: stems), women with a “menacing twist;” often highly sexualized, nightclubs, whiplash curves, and Japanese woodblock influences

Guiding Principles of Art Nouveau 1. Everything functional can also be made beautiful, but the function of the object should dictate its form 2. Art should be a part of everyday life 3. Reject the classical geometric form; return to the beauty of the natural world with the technology of the industrial one I gathered images from a wide range of mediums, buildings to built up oil paintings. I wanted to capture how all encompassing this art movement was, hoping that it would inspire me to also try and tackle a large range of strategies.

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Week 2: Compositional Strategies (or 20 Headaches Later)

Medium Combinations Attempted

Symbols, Images and Subject Matter

Glue Gun + Oil Pastel

Menancing Women

Gold Wrappers + Yarn

Plants

Ink + Fake Plants

Whiplash Curves

Stamps + Metal Foil

Night Life

Compositional Approaches Axial Grid Bilateral

Photo Collage + Acrylic

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It was at this very early stage in the process that I remebered I don’t actually know how to draw Art Nouveau’s signature curves or beautiful women.

What I was seeing in my head was not being translated well by what was coming out of my hand naturally.

Also Art Nouveau’s rather straigh forward compositional approaches involving a single figure either in the center or clearly anchored on one side of an axle wasn’t inspiring to help me create any super original compositions. I felt a little lost and very frustrated.

My initial joke to use candy wrappers created the unexpected problem of me getting incredibly ill from eating an entire bag of caramels in order to get their packaging and mold it into tiny flowers.

I was also unintentionally making fun of the incredibly ornate, over the top Art Nouveau style by using actual trash as a medium.

I discovered that the majority of the mediums I was working in were not translating well, but I kept going. Even if the majority of the work didn’t actually look good, I wanted to get all the bad iterations out of my system early on. Some of my most “Seriously, What Was I Thinking?” approaches include the Tinder profile made of yarn and wrappers, any piece involving usuing an actual quill pen and fake plants, and a torch that I really was not set up to make beautiful flames for.

Successful Moments Some Photo Collage Custom Made Stamps Wrappers Imitating Flowers.

Less Successful Moments Cut Out Figures Overuse of White Space Curves Certain Subject Matter 9

Week 3: Explore and Expand

Needs a better background

Border more interesting than subject

Still too plain

Closer crop of my one popular piece

My favorite papers layered with gold leaf

Would work better with black outlines

Painted the texture of my fallen curtains

Embroidering controlled curves

Trying out traditional AN frames and borders

Trying to use more gold

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Needs a stronger background

This was the week I had my first glimpse of hope for this project.

While at Target, probably shopping for jars, I walked into the kids’ art supplies aisle. On sale was a really funky pad of mixed media paper, full of great textures, patterns, and metallics. I had seen of my classmates using origami paper in their composition the week before, and I loved immeadiate depth it gave their work.

So I bought it, brought it home, and started cutting it up and painting over it.

Textures stronger than figure

I ended up with 8 new compositions that were much more energetic and bold, and much more in line with my natural design tendencies. I added a few new mediums into the mix as well. In lieu of fake flowers I incorporated parts of my lace curtains that had recently been broken. I took a few stabs at embroidering some of the outlines. I really found some moments of great success incorporating gold leafing, finally giving me the Klimt-inspired look I wanted to acheive.

Frame help highlight stamp’s details

Painted the texture of my fallen curtains

A closer crop made this more successful

There were still some compositiongs at this stage I wasn’t really fond of, but I kept them as placeholders hoping I would continue to find some better solutions.

Successful Moments Layering to Create Texture Unexpected Medium Choices Certain Crops

Less Successful Moments Hand Drawn Figures Placement of Subjects in Frames Trying out a new subject matter: birds

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Week 4: All Spread Out

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Got rid of the border

Works better as a flower than a person

Design works much better as a pattern

Trying some new layering

The Moon is actually an Art Nouveau brooch

Haven’t made something to fill this frame yet

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Brought it back, decided to try a pink border

Separated from the black background at last

I didn’t really change much between weeks 3 and 4. I finally had some pieces I really enjoyed, but I also started taking certain more successful elements out of their compositions and reworking them digitally into collages. When trying to create spreads, my inital focus was fn finding moments of contrast and similarity. I still had no real flow for how I wanted the pages to go all together, since I was still trying to hide some of the ones I wasn’t as thrilled with. I started getting more feedback from my classmates complimenting the work that showcased textures and patterns so much I was tempted to create the zine entirely out of them. There were dead spots as far as certain pieces go, and I felt myself hitting another wall trying to come up with at least six more attempts to finally knock some out the terrible ones out of my final spread.

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New background and cleaner subject, still doesn’t feel right

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Week 5: Titles, and Lettering, and Covers (Oh My!)

Top choice, but the lettering needs work

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This was favorite part of the zine process because I love coming up with names for anything. I had a lot of ideas and branched out in many different directions, some that had more to do with Art Nouveau, but most were related to my interpretation of it since it was becoming increasingly distant. The only pieces I was feeling really confident about at this point were the ones created with trash and scraps of paper, they were the most interesting to look at and work with.

I ended up picking the name Golden Garbage because I felt that’s really what the zine had become.

It would be hard for anyone with an art history background to pick up my book and automatically peg it as Art Nouveau, they’d probably be distracted by all the candy wrappers and patterened papers. But in a way, it was also the perfect title for an Art Nouveau inspired zine. It was a period of incredibly over the top decoration in every area of life, almost to the point that now some of it reads as incredibly tacky.

My intial covers for the most part weren’t really conveying what was inside. The typefaces I had chosen felt way too stiff and overall the compositions read as very safe and kind of boring. I decided to go with the cover that was actually one of the compositions inside the book, the one with the blue and gold.

I was letting the image do too much of the work, so I started reworking the lettering, this time by hand. I wanted it to mimic Art Nouveau lettering and to also work in the flow of my cover. At first I was using the wrong material to even write out different ideas, but once I found a gold paint pen I knew my solution would come quickly.

I tried four diffrent styles of lettering, finally landing on the final version here in the bottom right. It had the best flow and the most successful lock up.

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Week 6: Printing for Dummies

This project wasn’t my first time creating a physical staple-stitch book, but I definitely benefitted from printing out several dummy copies. Seeing my spread physically, even in black and white, made me realize there were some that just really were not working together, and others that needed to be reworked entirely. I wanted to whole zine to be a beautiful experience to flip through and I also wanted there to be some semblance of an order.

Printing dummies also reminded me of two things. 1) ALWAYS make sure you’re printing of the right edge for binding and 2) In the future, perhaps I should get someone else to staple for me, I have no talent at it.

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Week 7: Final Zine!

At last, we have a cover! In a final burst of inspiration, I replaced or modified 5 pages. Feeling pretty angsty about the project in general, I chose a method of therapy I used to employ in high school: cutting up fashion magazines. I ended up finding some great images that I was able to incorporate into my final spreads. The zine had finally come to life, and I was actually excited about turning it in.

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When finally deciding on a flow for the layout, I wanted to tell a couple of stories. One was the progression from flora and fauna inspired forms into human life. The second, was what happened once the absinthe in one of the pages spread, making more and more of pieces less realistic and a little more, well, trippy.

Back Cover

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Week 7: Final Thoughts Well, it seems we’ve reached the end. Overall, this was a very stressful experience involving lots of trips to Michaels, the gas station for more candy, the printer to find keep testing out new copies, and generally never getting enough sleep. I’m amazed I got through it on time, it was an intense introduction to the work pace at Otis. But now looking back on all of the work I made and miraculously did not lose in my apartment, I really enjoy seeing how much things changed. There was a lot of time and effort that went into this project, and I feel it actually shows now. I learned so much about my strengths and weaknesses in terms of my skills as an image maker and writer. I also learned that I should not be trusted with a stapler. Here’s to the next project!

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