I’ve been in my studio for two weeks working on surface design / collage elements for Objects of My Desire.  What that means is that instead of printing at Maine Media Workshops, I’m making paste papers and gelatin prints in my studio at home to get at some of the compositional aspects for each page of my book.

Composition is such a tricky thing.  On the one hand, we teach composition – that is, the arrangement of the visual space.  We teach what are called the elements and principles – things like color, line, texture, and balance, contrast, and movement.  As students we practice those elements trying to balance the picture plain, moving the viewer’s eye around the page with space and density, or line and shape.  As artists, we want to throw those rules away!  Composition is idiosyncratic and individualistic; our ideas predominate, the rules have receded into the background.

For me, each spread – the open page – contains an idea, an “object” of my desire.  Take breath, for instance – not really an object, but it is something we have and do.  I have a poem for this page that talks about the “radical commitment” of my breath – its ongoing devotion to me and my desire for it.  And to that end the composition must feel “breath-y.” The colors for my book have been chosen – watery greens, blue greens, and spatial blues.  For me they envelope everything from sky to land to water, as well as the ethereal.  So, two of my elements – color and text – are in place.  But there’s so much more.

Here you see a mock-up of the page without text.  And then some choices with text.

It’s my eye that will determine what looks best, and that will be the composition.  Does the page say what I want it to say?  Does the whole page say more than the individual parts?  Oh, but the doubts!  Is that good enough?  Have I thought about a contrasting color, perhaps?  What about line?  I must go back to the idea of breath:  something we don’t see, something that gives us life, something that fills me.