This will be my third consecutive year participating in Februllage! If you’re not up on your collage community lingo, Februllage is a monthly artistic challenge on Instagram, similar to “inktober” and other equivalent art challenges that pop up in hashtags every once in a while on your favorite artists’ profiles. Every day is a different prompt, and an artist can choose how much or how little they wish to participate.

In past years, I’ve picked and chosen prompts here and there to do, but never committed myself to doing one collage a day. This year, I resolved to try and give it my best effort to only skip 5 prompts, maximum. We’ll see how I get on… So far, I’ve only skipped one day….

You can find all of the completed works on my Instagram profile! I have included a couple uncensored versions of the pieces here on my blog (where I make the rules and no one can arrest me for posting ass and tiddies on main. In fact, it is strongly encouraged here on replicantruth).

This week’s prompts that I completed were: “Text, Triangle, Joy, Window, Jungle, and Bug.” Here are some process pictures and studio views from my first week taking a crack at Februllage 2021!

If I had to pick a favorite for the week, I think it would be this “Triangle” piece! She came together so smoothly and triangles are shapes I feel like I don’t get to work with often. Her fiery energy helped the piece take shape around her.

Now, it would be remiss if I were to say that her provocative pose didn’t ruffle some feathers out there in the collage community. I went into more detail about this on my Instagram post, but I have always felt like an outcast in the collage world because there’s this unspoken rule that collage must be wholesome and adorable. I am NOT about that, as I’m sure you aren’t either, if you’re reading this.

I was a little afraid of receiving some backlash for expressing such a strong opinion (on a collective’s challenge post no less… oops. I never claimed to have any chill), but I was met with an outpouring of support that truly touched me. I know Instagram as a platform is terrible to artists, but knowing there were other collage artists out there that love and support my work, even if collectives and algorithms keep it from being seen, gave me a small bit of hope. If you reached out after that post, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. It honestly gave me the boost I needed to keep posting and not censor myself for the sake of exposure. And collectives take note: Muted colors and quirky cute pieces are great, but collage as a medium is capable of so much more and you’re behind the times. Sorry ‘bout it.

Speaking of unjust artistic constraints, here are two more Februllage pieces from this week that I had to censor for The Gram™ because nipples are scary. The prompts for these two pieces were “Jungle” and “Streets.”

The whole time I was putting together the piece for “Streets,” the Mad Men theme song kept playing in my head. It was probably the source material, 60s LIFE magazines always put me in a vintage Mad Men kind of mood! I use a lot of media from the 60s, but definitely my favorite are 60s Playboy Magazines. The ads, the girls, the aesthetics— top tier material source for me (plus the articles really are good okay, I’m not just deflecting from my perversion. y’all know I don’t hide)! If I had to choose one source material to work from for the rest of my life, 60s Playboys would be it. Here are some process/studio photos I snapped during the making of “Streets!”

The prompt “Joy” was a lot of fun to work on! I cut all of those teenie tiny strips and had to assemble them again, like a jigsaw puzzle. I still don’t think I got them perfectly in order… It definitely gave a manic kind of feel to the concept of “Joy,” something I think I experience more often than true soul affirming joy, if we’re being honest. In the end, the chaotic feel of this piece and the awesome vintage car made this one of my favorite Februllages, so far. I can smell the burning rubber, just looking at it!

Overall, not a bad looking bunch for the first week! Bit of a motley crew, in terms of style, but I like to keep it spicy! I like to play with different styles and what is Februllage for, if not for practice and experimentation?

Also special mention to my good friend and fellow analog collage artist Erin Houghtaling, aka @okay_collage on Instagram! She was kind enough to send me this truly awesome resin cast X-Acto knife charm! I am obsessed with it and I keep it at my studio so I can wear it when I want to feel a little more badass. I believe she may still have a few of these up for sale, so if you know a maker or a collage artist that uses a lot of X-Actos, this would make the perfect gift! Thanks again, Erin!

I haven’t made an official announcement about this yet, so if you made it this far here’s the scoop: I’m going to be changing up how I do prints this year. There’s going to be limited releases of pieces after they’re done and only a select few amount of prints will be available. At the end of Februllage, I’m planning on dropping prints of a few of my favorites, so if you’re hoping for Februllage prints, yes, they are coming, but they are going to be in short supply, so if you want one you will have to pounce! This goes for all of my old prints, as well, so if you’re looking at trying to get a print of a specific old piece you better snag it now!

And last but not least, two positive things that have helped keep me going this week: I’ve been bringing some fresh cut fruit to the studio with me as a mid-morning snack. Some pineapple, strawberries, walnuts, and a dash of pico fruta really serve to keep the pep in my step while my eyes are crossing trying to glue tiny strips together in order.

The second is my dearest kitty, Yuki. She’s getting to be a very old lady and I treasure our cold weather snuggles dearly. Here she is, adorably shrimping on the couch in the warm spot I left behind:

That’s a wrap on week one of Februllage! Thanks for following along and I hope you keep coming back! Thank you all for your unending support and I’ll see you next week for a Februllage week 2 round-up!