Urgent 2nd Class: Creating Curious Collage, Dubious Documents, and Other Art from Ephemera,   ISBN:9780811843058

Customer Rating: 

"Urgent 2nd Class" doesn't seem to place one element of its agenda ahead of another. The author, Nick Bantock seems to have wanted to chat about his work, offer some insights into his techniques, and throw some inspirations out for others to use. If you're looking for just one aspect, you'll probably be disappointed, but if you are open to all that this book offers, you have a good chance of getting as much pleasure out of it as I did.

The techniques address fabrication of rubber stamps (especially official looking ones); the use of old photos, money, mail, maps, and other documents; the integration of photos and photocopies; collage; and numerous other materials and methods. Some of the uses of photocopies were new to me, as were the approaches to transfering laserprinter images to a work. Other parts of the book offered perspectives on different materials and techniques that I hadn't considered before.

This is where the inspiration comes in. Not so much inspiration for subject matter, but for techniques. Collage lends itself to an infinite range of tools and materials, and sometimes an artist need to be shaken form their customary tools and challenged to communicate with techniques they hadn't considered before. This book is an excellent inspiration in this sense.

Needless to say, the examples are all Bantock, and the materials that inspire Bantock and find their way into his work are here in force. If you're a fan of his work, this book is an essential part of your collection.

It is a diverse work, both in the scope of techniques and in the author's discussions of his materials and works, but enjoyable, inspiring, and accessible (this last being an affront to too many artists who appear to believe that 'accessible' is the same as 'bad art'). I took a lot of pleasure in this one.

E.M. Van Court

Customer Rating: 

I love Nick Bantock's work, and I was about to take a workshop in which we would illustrate personal narrative by creating convincing "fake" documents, so I thought this book would be a fountain of inspiration. It was pretty disappointing. It's almost as if the publisher simply rounded up a bunch of Bantock's unpublished work, created categories for chapters and then got a few comments from him. No techniques described, and so little context for the work presented that it felt more like a quick-and-dirty publishing project to trade on Bantock's name.

Customer Rating: 

As an artist (and bookaholic), I was fascinated with Nick Bantock's delightful "Griffin & Sabine" which appeared almost twenty years ago. Over the years I have collected all of his books ... except for this one - "Urgent 2nd Class". The art of collage has come to me slowly, and by accident, over the past eight or so years. There are many books and magazines which gave me ideas, but not exactly what I had in mind. What caused me to go to my Bantock books, and to find that "Urgent 2nd Class:..." existed? My Muse? Of course, Amazon.com was able to supply me with not only the book, but also had a number of pages available from the book itself so that one can see what one is getting (especially valuable in my case). I purchased it immediately!
Upon receiving the little book itself, I knew that I had found what I had been looking for ... great information, great art, great ideas, by a great artist/author who is able to say what needs to be said expressively, but without excessive verbage.
If you want to or are already creating collages that are perhaps a little out of the ordinary, and you haven't found just the right book to help you, this one could be THE ONE. It is for me.

Customer Rating: 

I'm not generally a fan of collage and assemblage, but two artists in those related areas really stand out for me: Joseph Cornell and Nick Bantock. Best known for his magical Griffin and Sabine series, Bantock's finest work creates layers of meanings that stand just outside of comprehension. In his introduction, Bantock say that he has no intent to falsify actual history. Instead, he takes on the goal of creating fantasy worlds with histories all their own. This book sketches some of the creative process involved in creating the historical documents and ephemera of those imagined worlds.

One difference between fictional story and fictional history, I think, lies in credibility. I'll happily suspend disbelief in the interest of enjoying a good story. Bantock's approach, however, builds believability into the fantasy objects themselves by borrowing heavily from authentic documents. Those can include antique currencies, stock share, passports, and other official papers, disassembled, merged with others, reworked, and touched with new visual elements. For most people, though, a lifetime's documents include letters from loved ones, snapshots, postcards, and souvenirs, to name just a few. Bantock's brilliance shines brightest when creating personal histories, or glimpses of them, from these humbler but more common kinds of artifacts.

You won't find step by step directions here, and the basic creative spark will have to come from within you - no one can light that spark for you. Instead, Bantock shows how to gather tinder to feed the collage artist's spark. He describes just a few of the kinds of materials available, including antique postcards (preferably used), envelopes, engravings, paper currency, postage stamps and much more. After those basics, Bantock goes on to describe how he makes (or has made) rubber stamps for imagined postage cancellations and other official-looking markings. He suggests a few techniques, like image transfers from color copies, but largely leaves aspiring collage artists to explore their own vision in their own way. It's a fascinating look into the creative process behind some of this most imaginative and involving books I've ever read.

-- wiredweird

Customer Rating: 

Tbis is a beautifully presented and visually interesting book, the least I would expect from this source. As instruction on how to begin producing art from ephemera, or on tips and tricks of the trade, it is woefully lacking. It is a visual tour with some written commentary; I expected something with more content. However, beauty is its own excuse often, and this is one of those occasions. A beautiful book . . .