Sara Fanelli, Found Resources

Found resources

Everything in Fanelli's collages has has a previous life. Sweet papers are crinkled and torn, newsprintt is yellowed. Every mark and stain has its own story which Fanelli interweaves with her own narrative. Her compositions are always based on line and shape with no uses of tone. With her favourite medium being collage  she has developed using her own materials, she has created an identity through her very personal style. She's adopted this method due to her vast collection of bits and pieces. She has a serious collecting habit especially of early 20th century stationary and collecting; stamps, decorative letter headings, embosses labels, price tags, envelopes with intricate patterned linings, postmarks and paper from exercise books. 

Figure 1 - Page from Wolf! 1997

Her book Dear Diary (2000) - stoutly built like an old-fashioned schoolbook, with its quarter-flush cloth binding and rounded corners - is an eccentric masterpiece: the endpapers are a mass of scribbles, sketches and half-finished sums, and the diary extracts are written by a girl, a chair, a firefly, a dog and a knife and fork. Hand-lettered throughout, it celebrates the art of handwriting, emphasising its close relationship with drawing, scribbling and doodling.

Figure 2 - Page from Dear Diary (2000)

Its clear her influence of collage has come from earlier collages by Kurt Schwitters and the Cubism movement of works such as Pablo Picasso. The way in which resources from collected things are arranged and worked on a page to create the illustration, is very true to Sara Fanelli and thats is demonstrated throughout her art form.

Figure 3 - Collage - Kurt Schwitters French, 1887 - 1946
Die heilige Sattermappe (The Holy Saddlers' Portfolio), 1922 collage on board folder.

Figure 4 - Cubism - Pablo Picasso 
Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper 1913

Figure 5 - Own use of found resources in a collage style.

Sara Fanelli's uses a methodology of finding found resources. With this in mind, I went into my purse and had a look to see what resources I had in my purse and could use and work into my collage. I found a used train ticket which inspired my own creation of chosen materials. I also found an old pack of indigestion tablets where I used the foil to create the wheels for the train. I also used old business cards and restaurant vouchers where I cut out the sayings and pictures in order to create the overall piece. 

Image references:

-Figure 1 - Fanelli, S. (2011) Sara Fanelli - a life in pictures.

-Figure 2 - Fanelli, S. (2011) Sara Fanelli - a life in pictures.

-Figure 3 - Picasso, S. and 2002, D. (2002) Cubism.

-Figure 4 - Art, N.G. of and Washington (2008) NGA-DADA-Art-collage. 

Bibliography

- Art, N.G. of and Washington (2008) NGA-DADA-Art-collage. Available at: http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2006/dada/artwork/collage.shtm (Accessed: 15 November 2016).

- Carey, J. (2004) Dynamic doodles. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/apr/17/featuresreviews.guardianreview8 (Accessed: 15 November 2016).

- Fanelli, S. (2011) Sara Fanelli - a life in pictures. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/gallery/2011/mar/31/childrens-books-7-and-under (Accessed: 15 November 2016).

- Picasso, S. and 2002, D. (2002) Cubism. Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/cubism#introduction (Accessed: 15 November 2016).