Behind Ask Medusa

By Mattie Jones

(Submissions Editor, Writer, Collage Art)

Ask Medusa resulted from a series of immediate and precise decisions, but it was undoubtedly influenced— as I find many collage works to be— by chance. After really looking at the base image, and finding the right surface (in this case, the back of my collage notebook) the piece itself was completed in less than 5 minutes, and I was almost shocked by the result. The title came in tandem with the piece’s completion, and at the time it seemed to me like a series of glaringly obvious choices. To this day I can’t name the exact origins of most of the images that make up this piece. The base image of Medusa herself is from the pages of an old art textbook, picked from an overflowing cardboard box at an Oglethorpe University Art Club meeting. Her accessories however, are trickier to source: soft colored tear drops in dual blue and pink tones, a rounded triangle patterned with what could be steel bridge cables, harlequin style checkers in blue and yellow, balanced by the red-brown brick tones that make up the bottom portion of Medusa’s bust. The original purposes of these items elude me— they could be from advertisements for clothing or perfume or food, from National Geographic articles or from the frail pages of an old Life Magazine. However, I do know the purpose that these items specific placements accomplish today, and I remain confident in the immediacy of my original decisions. As time has passed, and this collage approaches her first full year of existence, I am even more confident that this piece could have only ever been known as Ask Medusa.