Copies

I visited my friend Christina. She makes art journals. She loves using copies in her work, but hates the process of scanning them into the computer -- whereas I like to scan in my collages after I've finished them, but never use scanned or Xeroxed copies in my originals. There's no good reason for this since my found images are copies themselves, but that's the way I like to do it. Christina and I have different ways of working, but neither of us like doing digital collage. We prefer cut and paste. I know some people prefer to work digitally and I'm not against it; I just like messing about with glue and paint and so does she. In my opinion, the satisfaction of working with your hands is superior to fiddling around with Photoshop.

The idea of copies is fascinating. I've been watching musicals lately. Bob commented on their self-referential qualities: musicals about putting on musicals. "Let's fix up the barn and put on a show!" As a change of pace, I watched a documentary about Andy Warhol. As it turns out, there wasn't much change of pace since he was all about reproduction. While looking at multiple copies of mass-produced objects or famous celebrities you end up thinking about the act of looking itself, about the infinite variations in copies. Like the royal wedding: a copy of the royal weddings that have gone before with slight, almost imperceptible variations.