Collage for Tribal Swap
Copyright © 1997

I made this collage with hand carved rubber stamps and collage elements for a swap with folks on the Carving Consortium listserv. The theme was "Tribal Arts". For inspiration, I searched for images of petroglyphs from various ancient cultures. I used a total of thirteen stamps I carved in this project. Some of the stamps are actual petroglyph designs, some are imaginary. I started out my design by stamping each stamp on scrap paper and then cutting it out. I moved the cut outs around on a backing piece of scrap paper until I had an arrangement I liked, then I glued them down and drew various abstract shapes among them. The abstract shapes would be cut from various scrap papers. I traced all to use as a template for cutting out the shapes.

I made two different pieces using the same composition. One was on handmade paper, and one was on cardstock with a stamp pattern in ochre yellow all over the background. This is the version pictured above.

I used an ordinary glue stick to attach all the colored paper bits. I have two big boxes of paper scraps that I've been saving for twelve years. One is black and white, one is color. I took the box of color scraps and just started pulling out all the earth tones, cutting four or five shapes out of each color and randomly distributing them over both collages until I had all the shapes cut out. After they were glued down, I added the rubber stampings - mostly black, a few burgundy, one blue. I then had the finished collages color copied and cut them apart (I copied two per 8.5" x 11" page). I mounted them on backing paper with a stamped border. I sent twelve copies to the person coordinating the swap. She bound all the submissions into books and we each recieved a copy.

If you would like to see all of the Tribal Arts Swap entries, visit Betty Goetz's web site.


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