55×85

Seratus kolase di atas kartu kereta...

Zine pertama saya. Kumpulan 100 kolase yang saya buat di atas kartu kereta yang berukuran 55×85 mm. Kolase ini adalah hasil partisipasi saya dalam menjawab tantangan 100 hari berkarya The 100 Day Project.

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Jika tertarik mengunduh zine ini, silakan hubungi saya di: hello@kertasiun.com

Collage Challenges and Projects to Join in 2021

Hello, how is your 2021 going? Mine is full of ideas and inspirations. To spice up the year, I want to share some of (my favorites) collage challenges and projects we can join in 2021. Just in case we need supplement for daily practice. Almost all of them are Instagram challenges. Ready? Here we go….

Paris Collage Collective

Paris Collage Collective (PCC) is an online weekly collage challenge founded by Petra Zehner. Every week there will be a image prompt at their website. We can download (and print) then make one or several collages using the image. Analog and digital collages are welcome.

So, one collage a week for 52 weeks! PCC is open to everyone. We just need to use hashtag #pariscollageclub when we share our collage(s) on Instagram. 

A Month in Paper

A Month in Paper is Instagram challenge organized by The Paper Artist Collective. Throughout the month of January, they provide daily prompts challenge to answer. Then we have to put hashtag #AMonthInPaper when we submit/share our photos on Instagram (feed and/or story). This challenge is open to all artists working with paper, not only collage artists. We still have 9 days to catch up! It’s not too late to join.

Februllage

Februllage is an open submission project initiated by The Edinburgh Collage Collective and The Scandinavian Collage Museum. Throughout the month of February, there are daily prompts. So, one collage a day for 28 days! The hashtags to use are #februllage and #februllage2021.

Februllage 2021

Fantasía Collage

If you are a fan of street art and want to integrate it with collage, then you have to join Fantasia Collage. It’s founded by Aurora Duque and Lo Súper. They invite us to fill the world’s streets with collages and spread smile in this pandemic time.

Open Call Fantasia Collage 2020

Any size of collage is welcome but it should be without background. We should stick it on the street, wall cracks, or any corner in the streets. If we can’t go out, we can place or stick it on our window, plant pot, our terrace, etc. Take a photo and post it on Instagram with the hashtag #fantasiacollage and the name of our city (for example: #madrid).

Fragmented Collective

Another weekly challenges to join is creative challenge by Fragmented Collective, an international collage and mixed media art community. It’s open to everyone.

Fragmented Collective Challenge

Every week they will provide an image to download in their website. Then we can post our finished artwork on Instagram with the hashtag #FragmentedChallenge and they will feature some of their favorites on their Instagram feed.

Glue Together

Glue Together is all year long weekly collage challenge. There will be a theme every Sunday! It’s curated by X V c o l l a g e and Adam Hutcheson. The hashtag to use is #gluetogether.

Glue Together Week 110

The Collage Garden

The Collage Garden is founded by Miss.Printed. The idea of this project is to invite collage artists from all over the world to work together and transform concrete walls, abandoned building, open space, etc into beautiful paper gardens. 

The Collage Garden Sevilla 2020

To participate we have to make paper collage(s) with botanical theme (use botanical elements: leaves, flowers, insects, animal, gardening tools, etc). The collage should be without background and the size should be no larger than A5.

Collage Between Covers

Another great project from The Edinburgh Collage Collective. Collage Between Covers is a platform which allowed collage artists to offer an insight into their work and processes by sharing a glimpse of their sketchbooks. Founded and run by Rhed Fawell. If you make collages on sketchbooks or between the covers, it’s a great place to share your work! Use hashtag #collage_between_the_covers for possible feature.

My Sketchbook for Abstract Collages

The 100 Day Project

The 100 Day Project is a free, global art project, facilitated by Lindsay Jean. The idea is simple: we choose a creative project, do it every day for 100 days, and share our process online with hashtag #the100dayproject. Everyone is welcome to join this project! The next round starts January 31st, 2021.

It’s a great challenge for us to commit of making collage everyday for 100 days! Are you dare enough to join? I also asked to myself and I said: YES!

The Collage Exchange

The Collage Exchange invites artists around the world to send in a physical collage. All submitting artists will receive a collage at random in a worldwide exchange of artwork. Open to anyone actively associated or practicing artist with background in collage.

The Collage Exchange 2021

Deadline: March 31st, 2021. Submission to be an original analog collage. One submission per artist. Artwork to be submitted via post to the UK. Entry fee 10GBP (to be paid via PayPal). Any remaining money from The Collage Exchange 2021 submission fees will be donated to a charity of choosing.

World Collage Day

For all of collage artists on earth, this is our day! World Collage Day is a day to celebrate collage. The first World Collage Day was launched by Kolaj Magazine on May 12, 2018. Then it’s celebrated every year on every second Saturday of May. And the next World Collage Day is May 8th, 2021.

For those interested in joining the spirit of World Collage Day, Kolaj Magazine offer a number of opportunities to join in the celebration. Each year, they work with a collage artist to make a poster and other marketing collateral for the annual event. This year, they want to hear from artists who are interested in being considered. Deadline: January 31, 2021.

Visit the website (below) for specific details.

Kolaj Magazine is a quarterly, printed, art magazine reviewing and surveying contemporary collage with an international perspective. “We are interested in collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a 21st century art movement.”

Do you know other online challenges or projects? Put in the comment below. Thank you and see you around!

Me and Creary

Blockchain. I never dealt with blockchain technology before. Months after I created my art Instagram account, my husband introduced me to Creary, a blockchain-based portfolio platform. It was still on its first version, Creative Chain, at that time.

Since I’m a non-techie, I really wondered how it works. Do I really need it? How can I manage it then?

My husband then explained me concisely, “On Creative Chain, you can register and choose the license for your artworks. Once it’s been there, no one can change or erase it even yourself because data on a blockchain is immutable.” Okay, this was my very first lesson about blockchain.

Then he added, “Moreover, they have their own crypto-currency, CREA. So if you want, you can sell your art digitally using CREA. Basically, it works as social network like Instagram but it rewards you with CREA according to the likes/votes you get for your content.”

Okay. It really excited my curiosity. So let’s give a try.

As I remember, I joined Creative Chain in March 2018, not quite long after their first launching. At first, I was a worried about my art after realizing the fact that most artists in Creative Chain are digital artists. With many high quality graphic arts there, I could not imagine my amateur analog collage art adjoining them. I thought that my collages were not really “qualified” to put on Creative Chain. By all means, I was not confident enough to show my collage art. I am an analog self-taught artist who have no idea about digital technology. I was a kind of new kid on the block both in the art and blockchain world.

Since I work with analog collage, I have to assure myself that I digitize well my collages. Having good quality scanned collages is really important. Not only to “compete” with other digital artists, but also to build and prepare a good portfolio of my own.

CREA’s Weekly Challenge

One day, I stumbled upon their creative challenge called CREA’s Weeklys Challenges, a week-long art challenge crafted to get the creative juices flowing inside the Creativechain’s community. Then I submitted a collage titled: Humans Today for the Evolution challenge. Surprisingly, Humans Today was picked as the public’s choice winner and awarded 250 CREA. I thought I was just lucky. But then for the second time, my collage – A Whole New World – picked as the winner for Staff’s Pick category in the third Weekly Creative Challenge, the Trip challenge. I was awarded by 500 CREA for this time.

By the way, I never really thought about winning the prize. Moreover, the vote reward system still did not work in Creative Chain. But I was so happy, I won’t lie about this. Because it was the first creative challenges that I participated and finally I could prove to myself that I can do it. Do you remember how pessimist I was? Unwittingly, joining those challenges really helped me to explore my skill and build my confidence. And for the emerging creative community like Creative Chain, I think it is really important to create good environment and encourage the users to participate actively in order to grow the community itself. I am glad to join Creative Chain in their early stage and grow together with them.

Creary logo

The Birth of CREARY

In August 2018, they started to transform Creative Chain project into CREA 2.0, with a new brand  web app, called CREARY. Creary itself was released in February 2019. The name of CREARY is built by merging the words Creative + Diary and inspired by the concept of personal creative portfolio (visit my account here).

Comparing to its first version, Creary is much easier to manage and has better interface. Seems like the team have done an excellent job. It has many improvements, new implementations, and many more on the way (see roadmap).

In addition to CREA, they also have 2 other tokens, CGY and CBD. Here is a brief explanation about those three as explained on the website:

  1. CREA is the main currency of the blockchain of Crea. CREA is a liquid currency, so you can trade with it in exchanges, send it to other users or directly use it as a payment method. They can also be transferred to other users and can be converted into CREA ENERGY in a process known as “Energize”.
  2. CGY or CREA ENERGY is a token that give you influence in the community. The level of influence of your votes will depend on the accumulated CGY.
  3. CBD or CREA Based Dollar is intended to have a price correlation with the US Dollar. CBD is also tradeable and can be transferred anytime.

So, in every artwork we upload, we can sell it digitally by providing it in the download section and setting the price either in CREA or CBD. If we see the value of CREA will be high in the future, we can set it in CREA. But if we want to have the “stable” price in correlation with USD, we can set the price in CBD. At least this is what I understand and how I sell my art in my account. And if we don’t want to sell our art, it’s okay. We can just upload our art and register the license without selling it. The selling part is not obligatory.

For every registered artwork, it will have a Blockchain Certificate that indicates the timestamp and the license.

Creary Blockchain Certificate
Creary Blockchain Certificate

The Reward System in Creary

Before, my husband said that Creative Chain works like Instagram but it rewards you according to the likes/votes you get for your content. With many improvements in Creary, maybe I can add some to what he said, “… it rewards you not only from the votes and downloads you receive from other users, but also from interactions you make within the community.

In Creary, you can get rewards as author or curator.

As author, we can get rewards from the votes and sale. Whereas as Curator, we will get rewards by curating other artists’ works. The rewards obtained by the artist as author will be shared to the curators who voted. Sometimes, there are many cases that people in Creary vote a content just because they see it as a popular post and it has many votes. They just want to invest and reserve the curator rewards, they not really like or see the quality of the artwork.

To avoid case like this, Creary applied BUZZ score. It works as a verification badge and indicator of the reputation of a user within the community. As they said, “The Buzz is a gamification mechanism that measures the quality of a user account while motivating the community to continue improving. It is also a mechanism that is designed to help reduce abuse within the social network while encouraging people to do things correctly.” I totally agree and really like this score system because fraud happens everywhere. People can post and register an artwork which is not theirs. Like what happened in Verisart’s Blockhain when an artist registered Monalisa to their platform.

And one important thing is we (and anyone) cannot buy reputation. The reputation is achieved with effort, creativity and perseverance. Maybe we can buy CREA and energize it as CGY. The more CGY we have, the more powerful our influence will be. But this value has no effect to the Buzz. So maybe our account value thousands of dollars but at the same time we have a very low Buzz.

How Creary Affects Me as an Artist

I learn a lot in Creary. Mainly about blockchain technology and how it works in social networks. I also learn more about copyright/copyleft license. Maybe I ever heard about it before, but I implemented it for the first time in Creary.

Creary is the second social network I use the most after Instagram. So far, I notice different character and behavior between them. Small example, sometimes I get many likes in Instagram but only a few in Creary or vice versa, for the same piece of work. I don’t compare it due to the different users number. But what I see here is, there is a different taste of art between these two communities. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just the matter of technical algorithm or something. I’m not sure yet.

However, it makes me more curious and encourages me to explore my skill by experimenting different styles and learning more about creative/art marketing as well. It’s always good to know how public see your art. And as a biologist, I found it really interesting to learn how technology can affect the art world. Two different world which I never thought I would deal with at the same line of time. And this is what I have learned and experienced in Creary so far, as a non-techie and a self-taught artist.

The Creary community is growing, so am I.

Mata-Mata: A New Series of Collage on Jar Lid

Working on progress of paper collage on metal jar lid with scrap images of eyes
Work in Progress

This idea came when I was washing dishes and some mason jars with their lids. I looked at the lids for a while and suddenly an idea came to make collage on them. It might be so beautiful!. At that time, I did not have idea of any particular collage theme to make yet. But at least I knew it would be a (or some) series. Then I started to collect jar lids until I have many different size and colors.

A few days ago, finally I found a theme for my first series. I am happy to call it, “mata-mata”. Mata means eye in Indonesian language. While mata-mata means eyes and in the other hand also means spy. Through this series, I want to present the eyes as the doorway of our heart. Eyes are magical. They dominate emotional communication and communicate to others how we think and feel.

Six paper collages on metal jar lid with scrap images of eyes
The First Six of Mata-mata

I made the first six collages for this series on 8-cm metal jar lids. Just want to see how it looks while experimenting on other lid sizes and eyes materials. The idea is not just human eyes, but also animals’. So for sure, this series won’t stop at those six above.

Follow this project on Behance.

How I Started My Life as a Self-Taught Artist

When I decided to focus on making collage last year, I asked myself how I can make it in this kind of art world. I knew that entering myself in the art world is tough, as I don’t have any background in art and many experiences dealing with the “art” things. Moreover, I didn’t know many “artist” friends yet here in my town. My life was completely new back in the day.

So, how can I get my art noticed then? This question had been nagging me until then I set up a goal for my first move ahead: to get people’s attention to my works. To accomplish this, I have to explore my skills to stay productive therefore people will recognize my collage.

Started with INSTAGRAM

At that time, I didn’t know what to do first. The only thing that I thought was so important to do is to create an Instagram account for my collage art and reserve the name (Kertasiun) account. I realized that it was a great start when an Indonesian collage colleague told me that there were many people who wanted to name their art page/account as “Kertasiun” but it was already taken by me. Hmm, I don’t know if it’s true but I am so happy that I made the right thing. I never thought that Kertasiun was a premium name.

Having an Instagram account, or other social media/portfolio/web page (or whatsoever it is) will encourage you more to make art and then show it. You don’t want to have an empty account right? Until today, Instagram helps me a lot to grow and explore the world of collage and also the art itself. It has impacted me as a self-taught artist.

I started following many inspiring artists, collectives/groups, galleries, etc. Then I found out about some collage collectives in Barcelona like Societat Barcelonina de Collage and CollagexCollective (I will write about these groups in the next post). Joining them and their fun activities/workshops mean a lot to maintain my enthusiasm because I finally have space to share ideas and the most important is I finally have friends. I am surprised (until today) by all nice positive feedback on my works.

Thanks to Instagram, I also found out about some initiatives and communities like The Collage Garden, Februllage, Paris Collage Collective, Edinburgh Collage Collective, World Collage Atlas, etc. They have many awesome online creative activities that give chances for artists or collage enthusiasts to join them and get featured. This is a great opportunity for me. Then, I started to enjoy and like being more productive in this collage community. It’s full of inspiration and a positive group of people.

Today it’s been almost 2 years and if you ask me if I have reached my goal yet? Well, I don’t know. Maybe I used to call it a goal, but now I more like to call it a “learning process” because in the end it’s not merely to show off my artworks and gain “followers”, it’s more about challenging myself to keep learning and exploring something new every day.

Finally, I have some points to share (also applied to me) if you’re a self-taught artist like me and you’re just starting everything up:

  1. Keep experimenting and exploring your skill to stay productive. Maybe sometimes we have a creative block during making art, but when it comes, stay calm, go out from your studio or get up from your desk, take some tea/coffee, read a book, go to a museum, listen to music, or whatever that refresh your mind and bring back the zeal.
  2. Get active on social media, not only to show off your art but also to know people and share ideas with them. Give comments and or appreciation to other’s works. Engage with your followers, etc. Be social on your social media.
  3. And the most important is to be yourself. Don’t compare yourself to others. Learn from others instead.
Keep making!!

Leftovers

My leftovers

After making collage, I never threw the leftovers away because they’re still worth it for next works or projects.. and the idea of making collage is to upcycle and recycle, right? So why do we produce more trash afterwards?

Grouping by size

I always collect it in boxes, grouped by size first, and then when I have many enough, I will group it by color.