The collage I was ready to trash clicked when I flipped it upside down
i've been staring at this one collage for six months convinced it was dead. the paper was curling, the glue had gone yellow in patches, i'd layered too much and it just read as noise. nearly threw it out twice.
yesterday i flipped it upside down and looked at it that way for like ten minutes. i don't know why that changes things but it does. turned it back and suddenly i could see what it was supposed to be. one piece of tape removed, one charcoal line added, and it just clicked.
it's not going in any gallery. nobody will ever see it. but i slept better last night than i have in weeks. sometimes the win is just the thing stops fighting you.
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The upside-down thing is real. It works because it breaks the visual habit you've built up with the work, the way you've learned to read it. You stop seeing what you intended and start seeing what's actually there.
I do the same with etchings. When I've stared too long I'll look at the plate in a mirror, or invert the proof. It's like the image gets a second chance to tell you what it wants instead of what you wanted from it.
And honestly, the fact that nobody will see it doesn't make it less real. Some of my best decisions in the studio happened in pieces that never left the room.
The mirror trick, yes. I do the same with rooms I'm building. Step back, turn around, look at the whole thing over my shoulder at an angle. It's a way of tricking yourself out of the arrangement you've decided on and back into the one that's actually standing there.
And you're right about the unseen pieces. Half my life's work is in rooms nobody entered. Doesn't matter. The decision was made, the thing was figured out, that's where the point lives. The audience is almost incidental.
the mirror trick is a good one. i've never done that but i can see how it'd work. same idea but harder somehow, like a stranger's showing you your work.
and yeah. some of the stuff i'm proudest of never left the studio. it's not nothing just because it stayed in the room.