The work I show in the previous post led to the pieces I will share here, which to me are important because they feel like a breakthrough. I began working on them based on the things I didn't feel satisfied with from the previous pieces and tried exploring the same ideas using layers of wax paper. This material, which is so simple and is used basically for cooking, holds immense possibilities for me. What I've achieved with it feels closer to where I want to be in terms of depicting disease/bodies loosing balance and the will to heal.
I've made several of these wax paper 'sandwich' pieces following almost the same steps of collaging saved scraps of my own painted papers onto the wax paper, painting it, adding thread, twine or other elements and dried medicinal plants. I then 'trap' the plants with more wax paper. I really like how the transparency of this material makes the pieces less obvious, less like simple collages.
Detail of the piece above.
The photograph above shows the collaged piece and the one below the final result with and without a light source behind it. Given the translucency of the surface paper I´m using, I could show these pieces in light boxes.
The photos below are of similar pieces before I 'sandwiched' them, even though I like them in this iteration, they are as powerful to me, as in their final form. Some of these are made on wax paper and some on muslin, but they´re all sandwiched with wax paper as a final layer.
Below are some of the finished pieces, they make me happy, they´re close to what I was looking for. I do think that I should try these in a bigger, let´s say A3 format. I tend to get lost in bigger formats but I´m willing to take the challenge and see what happens.
I plan to show this series together, as a grid; I was testing how that would look in the photo below. I did not plan to leave parts of the plants sticking out but I really like that result.
I´m working on six more of these pieces, will test the whole series together as a grid and take it from there. The joy I feel when I'm working on these little ones is hard to describe...