When I started making collages, I used only images from magazines at hand (New Yorker, National Geographic, etc.) and cut and paste onto cardboard. Eventually, I moved to postcards, staying with their limited form (but seemingly limitless potential) for nearly a decade. I used regular scissors, glue sticks. At times I'd work with found objects or go with a gloss cover; but, for the most part, I was more interested in playing with space and color, and in telling little poem-like stories, than in expanding my techincal capacities. Recently, under the influence of collagists such as Ray Johnson and Irwin Kremen, I have branched out both in the materials I use and the techniques I try. Below are three newish pieces that each, in their own right, expand the threshold of my comfort zone. 

"Shadow Boxing" uses "encyclopedia" cards (a strange phenomenon, for sure!); in it, I experiment with cutting out the "shadow" form of an image. I am hoping to use the words as a background--less text as wallpaper.

The backing for "Cabaret Dancer" steals the back board from an old children's book and uses some of the graphic design from the cover. (Sacrilege, I know.)

And, with "3 Stages of Loss," I finally began to make collages in the mode of paintings or drawings. It may seem like a small thing, but by creating a triptych out of three small collages I moved closer to the graphic novel/comic book mode that I seem to be ever so slowing inching toward.