Collage as a way of recollection

Visiting icons of decorative art can be overwhelming. It’s easy to fall into the ‘tourist trap’ of taking a million photos, but not really seeing the place while there.  I document all the interesting details first, then take time to sit and let them all soak in…as best I can, knowing there are other visitors waiting to do the same!

Topkapi Palace Harem

Collages are a working tool to help me see and revisit a site again. Easier than scrolling though every last shot, I select my favorites and assemble them roughly in the order of the site layout, if possible. Or I collect all the similar details – the circles, the tilework – and compile those for later inspiration in my design work.

Circular forms of the Hagia Sophia

Designers have long used collages, or “mood boards”, before anyone ever thought of creating a site like Pinterest. The point is to compile the visual best of each ‘idea’, whether that idea is a place I’d like to remember, a knitwear collection I’m designing, or a room I want to live in.

The Southeast: Mardin and Midyat

Places have moods; they evoke certain emotions when experienced. When images are gathered together, those feelings return. Like Mardin, as a warm colored, rough-hewn, handmade place.

Or the Aegean region, dominated by blues and whites, formed by the grand cultures of eastern capitals,  now in ruin but clearly impressive in their day, and even today.

The Turkish Tulip Trip 2013

Collecting images from our entire Tulip Trip, it’d be easy to focus on the handcrafts, forgetting to look at the environment in which they were made. Better to start with the big picture, then revisit each of the colorful kaleidoscope bits, one by one.