SCRAP SCANS

One unexpected thing has come out of building the SCRAP corner.

Before a scrap ever makes its way into a physical collage, I almost always scan it.

Partly because I’m a hoarder...

...and partly because once something gets glued down, it’s committed. A collage only exists once, but a scan gives me the freedom to keep using the same fragment over and over again. It gives me the freedom to make a torn lip a part of five different compositions. A random strip of holographic paper might sit quietly in a folder for months before finding its way into something completely different.

When I first started, I was convinced I’d have a perfectly organised archive. Everything had a category.

Lips & Eyes.

People.

Textures.

Words.

It was all very sensible.

That system of course, lasted about four minutes. Because you can't put creativity into a box.

Almost immediately I found myself ignoring the folders and throwing completely unrelated scraps onto the scanner bed just to see what happened. I find that when I have a big pile of random pieces, my own eyes and hands instinctively grab combinations i think might work together. A lipstick next to a piece of iridescent paper. A fashion image on top of a scattering of safety pins.

Fragments that had absolutely no business sitting together suddenly started creating their own compositions. It's not that the scans feel more exciting than the collages they eventually become, its that they are their own collages, before they move on to another life.

I’ve started thinking of them as little artworks in their own right rather than simply documentation. They occupy this strange space somewhere between archive, experiment and finished piece.

Some of them will eventually become physical collages.

Some will become digital works.

Some will probably sit on my hard drive forever.

And I’m completely fine with that.

I’ve realised the scanner isn’t just a way of preserving material—it’s become another creative tool. It’s somewhere between collecting and making. Every scan is another opportunity for chance to intervene before I make any permanent decisions.

For someone who spends so much time cutting things apart, it’s funny that one of my favourite parts of the process involves preserving them.

Maybe that’s the contradiction that sits at the heart of SCRAP.

Not everything has to become something else.

Sometimes the process is the artwork!