Cohort 52 is a platform for emerging voices from the Applied Art & Design program at Sierra College in Northern California. Cohort 52 is facilitated by Assistant Professor Vincent Pacheco.

5100 Sierra College Blvd, Rocklin, CA 95677
vpacheco@sierracollege.edu

MarcThompson_2
MarcThompson_3
MarcThompson_4
MarcThompson_5
MarcThompson_6
MarcThompson_7
MarcThompson_8
MarcThompson_9
MarcThompson_10
MarcThompson_11
MarcThompson_12
MarcThompson_13
MarcThompson_14
MarcThompson_15
MarcThompson_1

Marc Thompson

“ I drank strong coffee and prayed for guidance.“

 

Interview

 

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

I had a difficult time in life.  So I am a little different than most.  My priority is to care for the souls around me more than accumulating wealth and material things.  I would like to be successful and have a career but I am successful at just being in the moment.

 

How much experience do you have with collage?

I am about 80% finished with a degree in Graphic Design.  I have had intro to two dimensional design, intro to sketching, intro to digital design and now publishing.  I have truly applied a great deal of my education to my creative process.

 

Collage artists tend to be picky when it comes to their source material. Can you talk about your approach for selecting your images and/or publications?

I used a seed catalog and some very old sheet music but primarily I used National Geographic magazines.  I also printed a few images off of the internet and used glow in the dark paint and a black sharpie.

 

Were there any large themes you intended to explore or unpack before you began with this series of work? Did you stay on theme, or did things change as you began physically cutting and pasting images?

I simply tried to explore the world.  Anything that pointed out something confounding about life as we know was included.  I stayed on theme and it felt like God had provided just the right pictures for what I was trying to do.  Things fell into place in an amazing way.

 

How did your background and life experiences inform your collages?

I wanted to explore the darker themes of humanity.  We are part of the world and my work is speaking to humans so I explored in human terms.  The question of our existence, the question of our populations, the question of life and death.  The agony of realizing it could all just be a giant pile of shit.  I went fairly dark as my other classmates seem to have many shades of gray to their personalities.  I have been to hell. I have heard the howling screams of agony and hate and yes that has informed me about the world.

 

What was your environment and set-up like when making the work? Did you listen to music? Did you work in isolation, or were you surrounded by distraction? Do you think this influenced the work you made?

My first few collages took hours.  So I set up an area where the work would flow.  I drank strong coffee and prayed for guidance.  By the end of my third collage I was in the flow and ideas and materials came together in a wonderful way.

 

Scissors or X-Acto?

Frankly, I am going to cut corners whenever I can get away with it, so scissors.  However, I invested in a paper cutter which works wonderfully and I am no stranger to the x-acto nor the utility knife, they are wonderful also.

 

Was there anything unexpected that emerged while creating your work? Any new epiphanies?

I really want to explore reducing my collages to simplest terms.  I have one collage with just one random scrap of clippings.  It has a powerful message and I am really proud of that one.  I really think many collages are too busy and do not apply Gestalt design elements and this was not my attitude at the beginning.

 

Looking at your work again, has your understanding of your collages changed over time? Has any hidden meaning emerged?

No, the whole thing was shaped by exploring our world.  

 

Exhibition catalog, designed by Marc Thompson

Info
Category:
Tags:
Date:

December 4, 2023

Related Projects