Rex Ray demonstrated his collage techniques at Gallery 16 tonight. First he applied a watered-down Elmer's glue with a brush onto a large canvas. Then he adhered hand-painted paper on top. He used a brayer and sponge to flatten the paper onto the canvas. I noticed there was quite a bit of water used. Then with an X-acto knife, he defly cut shapes on the paper, then removed the cutouts. It was interesting to see that instead of cutting shapes and messing with glueing them on the canvas, he applied sheets of paper and cut them out from the canvas. As long as the glue stayed wet, the paper came off easily. I wondered how he would adhere the next layer of paper without accidentally cutting the paper beneath. We didn't stay long enough to find out.
