In honor of the Semiquincentennial, the Bisesquicentennial, the Sestercentennial, or the Quarter Millennium, I thought I’d try to do a visual mashup of The New Colossus and Ozymandias. I fully expect this not to work, but maybe I will learn something along the way. I’m playing with image transfer techniques, stencils and collage, all of which are learning opportunities. I found a handwritten draft of The New Colossus on page 1 of Manuscript notebook from the Emma Lazarus collection, 1877-1887 and liked the calligraphy, so I adjusted the levels a bit and reversed the image for transfer.
To do the transfer, I put Citrisolv on a paper towel and dab and rub the back of the printout onto the target sheet. Thankfully it was relatively warm out yesterday, because I don’t think I’d want those fumes indoors. It didn’t transfer cleanly, but maybe that won’t matter.
Next I wanted to superimposed some flaggish imagery. In preparation for this I made a stencil, which involved printing a tiled image, taping the parts together and making the cutouts. The stars were going to be a problem because they’re disconnected from the rest of the negative space, so I made some connectors to see how it would work out.
I also took the Statue of Liberty silhouette from The Planet of the Apes to make another stencil. I may have to do a few layers of color before I get to it.
Here’s where I’m at so far.
I may apply some ochres and earth tones to make it looked aged. That may serve to mute the blue and red, and hopefully the text as well. I need to get another text layer on top of this, and to find a way to make it more or less legible.
