Ahead of the curve -

"No Waitin' G #1"
stressed paper collage by Mick Mather

As I mentioned in this post on Sunday, here's the original stressed paper collage that resulted in that very "op art" image appearing at MICKMATHERSARTBLOG. To begin with, stressing paper is something I've been doing for quite a few years now - both in my painting and in certain collage pieces. For this piece, what I mean by stressing is a step-by-step process that begins with a slick, newspaper advertisement insert. It all begins by wadding the piece up in a ball, opening it, folding and creasing and then balling it up again. Next step is to the sink where the tight ball of paper is soaked and then carefully opened up. The water torture is critical since this sort of paper has close to a 90% clay content and will disintegrate quickly. While still wet, pieces are torn away, laid on a separate sheet of standard, white bond paper, quickly laid about and arranged until the image has been reconstructed. More than one advert can be used - as can be seen in this stressed paper series - although I only used one in this instance. You can also see a larger, manipulated version of this and, at last count, it's been developing into a lot more than the original three I had planned. Stay tuned.