Anda Marcu

London, Ontario, Canada-based collage artist Anda Marcu shares about the inspiration that drives her work -- memories -- and the materials that help her convey them. I recently had the chance to interview her and learn about her current series “Overlap.”

Tell me about your background.

I grew up surrounded by the arts. My grandparents were art collectors. My parents would take me to art museums and galleries.

As a child, I often fell asleep looking at paintings, and paintings were the first thing I saw when I woke up. In all that time in between, whether I would remember my dreams or not, I would rest assured that the dream world is as real and rich as all the other worlds surrounding me, the creation of people’s minds: books, theatre, images. I grew up immersed in all these vivid worlds and treasuring my inner world among them. When I was looking at paintings, I was fascinated with the brush strokes more than with what was going on in the painting and I was mostly drawn to abstract art and surrealism. Since I was a child, all I wanted to do was to make art to have it hang on collectors' and galleries' walls just like the art I used to contemplate. There was nothing else I wanted to do.

I cannot think of a time when I wasn’t preoccupied with the creative act, even if just conceptually.

What ideas are you exploring in your work?

My work is about memories, it explores reminiscing and the flow of time through the constantly changing landscape of memories. My aim is to turn memories into shapes and bursts of colour in an attempt to save fleeting moments.

With some memories being fragile and evanescent, I sometimes feel like I am partly embarking on my very own quest of searching for lost time.

Tell me about the materials you choose.

I love paper and I am a paper hoarder.

I love everything about paper in general: the various textures, the sound it makes when you move it around, tear it, crumple it, how it feels in my hands, everything (paper cuts not so much).

I have been trying to incorporate paper in my work for a while, but nothing seemed right until now.

All the works in this series are collages of rice paper coloured with pastels pasted over mineral (stone) paper.

The collages are then mounted on wood for stability and durability.

The two types of paper brought together are rice paper - soft yet rough - and stone paper - soft yet sturdy, with a very appealing texture. Stone paper is soft to touch, velvety, with absolutely no tooth. It is a tree-free, water-free, and bleach-free paper made from mineral powder (ground calcium carbonate or limestone) and a non-toxic resin. Metaphorically speaking, these papers resemble the nature of memories – delicate, yet strong.

The rice paper is coloured using chalk pastels before being torn and placed over the stone paper. I wanted a bit of separation between the two papers. I wanted the rice paper to appear as sitting on top of the stone paper and not blended into it as it is the case with most collages. What I love most about this project is how hands-on it is. Except for a pair of scissors here or there and a brush for the gouache application, everything else is done with my bare hands.

Share a bit about your artistic process.

It is a combination. I do have a special interest in collage and I did study the technique and famous collage artists’ work (like Hannah Hӧch or Man Ray). I combined reading and observation with trial and error and a bit of intuition. After the serendipitous moment of having some bits and pieces of rice paper falling over the stone paper, the choice of materials was carefully planned.

In the beginning, I did some trial runs with these two types of paper together with the pastels and gouaches because I didn’t know if what I had in mind would work. It took a bit of getting to know these materials together and how they interact, and a bit of process troubleshooting and finessing. One example would be that not every pastel fixative worked well with the rice paper. The idea was that the colour wouldn’t transfer on the stone paper during the pasting step while maintaining the paper’s texture.

How many artworks do you have on the go at a time?

I usually work on a few pieces at a time. If an idea pops in my mind, I am not going to put it on hold just because I work on something else at the moment. I really go with the flow on this one – I am not going to start more pieces just for the sake of it, but I will not put anything on hold either. At this very moment, I have three pieces in the works.

Can you talk a bit about the evolution of your practice and work?

I have always liked the hands-on manipulation of materials while leaving some room for serendipity. This shows in my choice of materials over the years. In addition to painting, collages and fabric art I worked with film photography for a number of years. At the moment, I am drawn to acrylics (there is something about the rubbery texture and rich color intensity that fascinates me), fountain pen inks, chalk pastels and gouache.

In terms of subject, my work always revolved around the ideas of reminiscing, memory retrieval and memory preservation (including saving the present moment for later – this was mostly the case during my film photography years).

Tell me more about your current series “Overlap.”

Overlap started as a tactile experience but ended up bringing in all senses.

Coloring, cutting, pasting and layering make me think of putting together a puzzle, except that instead of having the desired layout beside me on my desk, I have to peel through layers and layers of memories for the right pieces to complete my image.

I remember wishing for snow one afternoon when I was sitting at my work table. I was absent-mindedly ripping apart pieces from a sheet of rice paper. I have been holding on to this rice paper stack for at least 5 years. I liked the texture, how it felt in my hands, and soon I started paying attention to the sound it made while I was ripping it. I started reminiscing - I thought of winters when I was a child, I thought of my dog who was no longer, I thought of a weird dream I had not too long before. With all these on my mind, I started arranging the rice paper pieces onto a sheet of stone paper I had on my desk. And that's how Overlap came to be. It was something that was waiting to happen, hanging in the back of my mind all this time.

It was actually a very exhilarating moment when I realized everything was falling into place and Overlap was shaping up as a project.

I am hoping to have all the pieces together in a solo show, but I don’t know when this would be possible with the lockdown and foreseeable restrictions. The galleries haven’t been opened for physical shows in my area for the past year or so. In the meanwhile, the series will be on view on my website starting March 8.

What is your favourite quote?

It is a quote from Moby Dick: “[…] the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago […]"

This quote gives me the feeling of things falling into place, it makes me sad (the good sad) and happy at the same time.

Which museum or art gallery do you never tire of visiting?

The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. As for favourite artwork, it is a tie between Magritte’s The Dominion of Light and Yves Klein’s Requiem.

Which 3 artists do you enjoy at the moment?

There are so many, but if I had to name just three: Caroline Denervaud, Tina Scepanovic, Martha Tuttle.

What is the most memorable thing someone has said about your work?

Someone said “I wish I would wake up in there.” For someone like me, who is drawn to abstract visuals and has colours and shapes constantly floating in their head, this is the best thing to hear from a person who knows nothing about my creative process. I am trying to depict what I see in my mind, and if someone wants to wake up in my mind then there’s nothing greater than this for me.

You can follow Anda on Instagram @andmarcuart.

Meera Palia

Piya Samant