Studio Series: Before & During Collages III

Original Collage, 2008

Final collage, October 2011 © Karen Thiessen 2011

Of my Before and During Collages, this is my favourite to date. I'm thinking of digitally printing it on fabric so that I can use it in a textile project. My autumn project of resolving old collages was successful– I fixed over 20 collages and recycled a few. I'm now making new "bad" collages to give me something to amend the next time I need to "prime the pump." 

It just occurred to me that few of you know what priming the pump means. To prime the pump means to add liquid to a pump to expel the air so that it works. Long ago, you would add a cup of water to a water pump so that the pump would draw up the water from a well. I remember adding water to the top of the old farm pump, the feel and smell of the iron handle in my hand, and how as the water came up, it would be harder to pump, the thrill that I had when water gushed from the spout of this old technology, and finally the smell of my hand afterwards (an iron smell). Nowadays priming the pump means to do something in order to make something succeed.