The fiction writer Ron Carlson once said in a lecture that the one thing writing teachers and writing programs can't teach an aspiring writer is subject matter. And this, he said, might just be the most important part. What do you write about? Why?

In collage, the materials you use might be the most important thing. Do you use fancy papers, make your own, take images from books or magazines, old or new, or do you only go with found scraps taken from your urban strolls? Or do you mix all these together?

"One for the Crow," a collab with Brother Charles, uses a little of each. I can see old images from books (Charles), image fragments from magazines, old and recent (me), fragments of colored paper (Charles?) and an old postcard as backing (me). 

"Collage on a Walker Evans Photo..." starts with a full page image taken from a 50s era Fortune magazine. I had known that Evans had worked for Fortune early in his career, but I didn't know they gave him such a spread.  To alter the image, I used mostly images from ads in that same issue. I also continued with the rub-off advertising type and experimented with a little drawing and doodling using colored pencil to approximate old hand-coloring techniques. 

In Charter Weeks' "Worthington Man" you see that the materials he uses help create the overall feel of the collage. There's an industrial thing going on here, heightened by the paper products with their business codes and terms. (Notice the Japanese lettering on the top right!) 

I know from hearing stories that Charter signed this one "Cry Baby" in reference to the name he was given by Ray Johnson in one of their few NY Correspondance School exchanges.  Charter had sent him a collage that Johnson had cut up and re-arranged to spell "cry baby."