Take out the papers and the trash

The biggest project I've been working on recently has been a collage for my dad.  

One of the things I've had on my bucket list is taking a photograph and turning it into a collage.  So my dad's collage was the perfect opportunity to give this idea a try.  

When I started this piece I had about 20 songs and a giant stack of letters I wanted to incorporate into the artwork.  The only thing I could perfectly visualize was my dad's shirt, so naturally it was the toughest thing to make.  In my mind I could perfectly picture a lemon shirt, in honor of one of our favorite poems, "The Murder of Two Men By a Young Kid Wearing Lemon Colored Gloves," and an outline with the lyrics to Yakety Yak.  My dad is a musician who played saxophone and organ mostly and his Yakety Sax bit was one of my favorites.  Sometimes, when he played the song he would ask his audience if they wanted to hear it backwards.  Everyone would shout yes and he would turn around and play the song again.  To this day, it's still one of the funniest things ever.  

There are so many stories in this piece I could go on for a really long time.  But I will let the rest of the stories reveal themselves one petal at a time.  

At one point, I ran into a wall with this piece.  If you guessed that it happened while making dad's shirt, you are right!  Robert stepped in and helped me create a new top-secret technique.  It involved math and thinking about the inverse of lines.  

It was also tricky to make Dad's hair.  I thought it would take two layers of strips, but I was wrong!  It took two layers plus a haircut, which I am not qualified to give, but thankfully this wasn't real life, so I was able to give some of his hair back. 😂 

I see a lot of pretty and tidy work areas on Instagram, which I'm deeply suspicious about.  I am always wading through mountains of paper, getting paint in my hair, and sometimes accidentally dunking a brush into my coffee cup.  Bye bye coffee!  But I proudly embrace my messiness.  This piece was particularly messy.  Each time I opened the door to my office to work on this collage I would see the mountains of paper and get so excited. 

But I'm sure you're wondering, did he like his collage?

My dad loved the piece, and I further cemented my place in his heart as favorite daughter, or pardon me, favorite dotter.