Ten years ago, when I started teaching myself what I now refer to as my Assemblage Art work, I often consulted Mixed Media magazines, Mixed Media blog posts, and Mixed Media YouTube videos for instruction. You see – in those early days, it was all about learning how to work with so many varying mediums. What was even available? Why couldn’t I make my paint look this way? Or why was that color so vibrant when mine wasn’t? How did I finish it all off? What about that crackling – I couldn’t figure that out. Or that light sprayed effect – where in the world did that come from? How did one get things to adhere that well? And why couldn’t I obtain that rusty look on metal? I didn’t realize that there were at least twenty different ways to paint an item depending on the end result you desired. Or that those sprays were much more than adding a bit of paint to water in an 88 cent Hobby Lobby spray bottle. And much, much, much more.

And learning Mixed Media techniques was the answer to all that. To become proficient in Mixed Media, one usually needs to learn how to effectively utilize a number of art mediums and the more, the better. And it is also discovering just how much there is to learn all while realizing there is still so much more to learn although you have already spent days, weeks, and months carefully following tutorials from YouTube or art supply sites and then practicing, practicing and practicing it all some more. Yes, what we now know as Mixed Media is the answer. Mixed Media is usually the term I use when searching the internet for a new process or product. And it delivers. But… Mixed Media does not describe the art I now turn out.

When I launched Art Creations by Vicky, I knew I had to properly describe just what my art was. And although I knew it encompassed a great deal of Assemblage technique, I still recalled all those years I spent learning Mixed Media techniques and felt I had to give homage to Mixed Media when naming the type of artwork found on the site. So, I started with “Mixed Media Assemblage Art”. As those two months of starting a site, an Etsy shop, and a Facebook page flew by, I didn’t think much more about my description other than it nagged at me – I knew it missed the mark. Now that I have the time to look around and find other work similar to mine, I have come to the conclusion that I need to remove the “Mixed Media” from the description. And I need to emphasize Assemblage Art.

Here’s a definition of Assemblage Art per Wikipedia:

 

Assemblage Art – an artistic form or medium usually created on a defined substrate (insert canvas here) that consists of three-dimensional elements projecting out of or from the substrate (canvas). It is similar to collage, a two-dimensional medium.

 

That’s it! That’s me! Finally, an accurate description of just what I create.

So, I’m removing Mixed Media from my art descriptions. It’s pure Assemblage Art. Mixed Media helped me arrive at this place but my love all along has been taking many small objects and forming a single art work with lots of three-dimensional action.

Other descriptive phrases that I feel work well for the type of art I create (other than Gourd Art) are Found Object Art, 3D Art, and even Repurposed Art or Recycled Art.

So, although all this doesn’t mean you will note a difference in what you see here at Art Creations by Vicky, I feel solid in selling myself purely as an Assemblage Artist. Thanks Mixed Media – you are part of what I create but the end product in my case is Assemblage Art. That feels ever so right.

Vicky

SaveSave