Desktop Diaries, Digital Collages

BUTTERFLY & RAIN
Antique endpapers, 'Existentialism and Human Emotions', 'An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law', vintage butterfly-wing pendant, vintage camera, blue sign reflected in the rain.


In the summer of 2009, I started posting digital collages on a blog that I kept just for myself as a journal, called Desktop Diaries. They basically consisted of images that piled up on my computer’s desktop.

Description on the site:
As a graphic designer, artist, and collagist, my screen, at any given moment is a mélange of personal photos, assorted reference, spreadsheets, infographics, news sites and whatever essential item I might be watching on eBay. All sense of scale is lost as details can be huge, and sweeping vistas can be reduced to thumbnails. The collagist in me does not see the individual images, but rather the patchwork as a whole. And then I just have to grab that image. After all, these particular juxtapositions may never occur again. It’s not about Photoshop effects for me. I see the elements as I would pieces of found paper or ephemera--the edge of a window is just the digital equivalent of a torn edge of paper. The blurriness of an enlarged image is “found” texture. My desktop background with its floating folders often becomes an element as well. That is the origin

There haven’t been any new ones in a while--All My Eyes takes enough time. Here’s a selection of the over 50 posted.

IS MY TURBAN DISTURBIN’?
Ethnic woven textile, vintage quilt, K.O. Munson “sketch pad” pin-up calendar page, chemistry set, graffitied priority mail sticker


PYRITE EYES
Eye studies by Carrache, pyrite, vintage drawer liner in an antique dresser.


MOTH ON WHITE SHOULDERS
Vintage box of White Shoulders, moth on the screen at night, fresh-picked wild roses, vintage vase.


PIECE FULL & AMETHYST
Antique color chart, marbled endpaper of an old book, mod fabric, vintage textile swatch book, black and red scarf, combs, "Piece Full," book about japanese Boro textiles, mushroom textile, detail of a mod print slip, antique swatch book, print of an amethyst crystal.


MAX HUBER & BOOTS
Book cover, Max Huber Progetti Grafici 1936-1981; riding boots; Lichtenberg figure.


DARLING & BABIES
Pages from a German art calendar; package of plastic toy babies; title sequence from Darling, the 1965 John Schlesinger film with Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey; incredible ring with a flower of gemstones including turquoise, pearl, amethyst, and onyx.


HAMMERED & HAIRNET
Vestry seal of the Parish of St. Pancras, hairnet envelope, hammered silver modernist ashtray.


TAKE FIVE
Fragments of antique book bindings, TITA candy wrapper from Argentina, match book from Cafe Loup, card from Jenny Holtzer retrospective at the Whitney "GOOD DEEDS EVENTUALLY ARE REWARDED", diploma seal, ethnic textile, found handwritten type, Japanese cookbook, postcard of Gaudi staircase, vintage fabric, 3-d puzzle pieces illustration, wrought iron gate, Agam silk screen.


VENUS & DANSK
As soon as I scanned a page from an old collage journal (lower left quadrant: red foil, Venus de Milo), I just had to start combining it with other images--like the graphic candelabra by Dansk, and the rust cover of an old Russian book with a lovely little silhouette. The vertical stripes on the upper left is a photo of old painted paper.