Small is Beautiful
New series of 10 x 10 cm collages; some will be included in the upcoming Enchantment exhibition at Et Al Gallery, Sandgate Brisbane.
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” ~ Ernst F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
There is a fascination with tiny, tiny things. Tiny hands and feet, presents in tiny boxes and miniature artworks, think eighth century Coptic manuscript illustrations and Islamic art from the middle ages. Even tiny houses have become desirable options that use less space and resources to build and maintain.
Yet in contemporary art, small is not always considered beautiful. Many galleries prefer big, bold statements from their stable of artists. These require substantial capital outlays by artists for materials and framing, as well as storage (if they don’t sell).
Thinking small is not an indicator of your artistic merit or success. Many small works put together create large panels. Patchwork quilts are exactly that, patches of colour and texture brought together to create a cohesive whole. Small artworks can be similarly considered as a way to create a body of work through scalable thinking.
I’ve always created small, starting with my 10x10cm daily collages I started In 2010. Turning up for my creative self every day for 10-15 minutes was a discipline to train me into ‘thinking and practicing as an artist’. Even when I didn’t feel like it at the end of the day, I kept doing it for six years straight, had a break for 18 months, then started up again in 2018 until I finally had had enough at the end of 2022.
These were important steps of daily creating that helped shape my default collage practice. It’s been a lifeline to me while I’ve been recovering from my knee surgery, finding small pockets of pain free time in which I can create little collages to ‘keep my hand in’.
In the lead up to Christmas there has been a plethora of small work group exhibition call outs for artists to showcase their art as accessible and affordable gifts. I had plenty of newly minted works to choose from. Little cyanotype collages 20x20cm set the tone for me thinking even smaller and I got back to creating my easy, fun 10x10cm collages.
I’m now in the process of creating an Instagram account dedicated to square collages. It’s a work in progress which I hope to launch later this month (or maybe next year).
Thinking and acting sustainably was advocated in the seminal book Small is Beautiful by economics (and environmental) philosopher, Ernst F. Schumacher, which was published in 1973. It was a blueprint for micro thinking; reducing waste by reducing want, focusing less on production for its own sake (Gross National Product) and more on living sustainably and spiritually.
Reducing my own environmental footprint to me means less new framing of artworks and more recycling of old frames, as well as staying small and within budget. I plan to use what I have to hand in my studio, using old prints, papers that have been lying around in my paper drawers (waiting for the ‘right project’) and making art that builds my own sustainable practice. As Schumacher wrote “Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful.”
Four daily collages from November 2022 when I visited the UK.
