Exploring Collage

About this Episode

A couple of weeks ago we did an episode about working in mixed media, and collage figured prominently among the artists who responded to our Facebook question about the topic. Collage interests many artists because of its potential to bring various materials, images, and processes together in surprising and expressive combinations. Today we’ll look at some of the approaches that artists use who work in collage, and why they are drawn to this way of working.

Collage refers to joining bits and pieces of various sources together-- images, materials, processes, and ideas. The term usually refers to 2-D work although a 3-D surface can be collaged upon, if we use the word as a verb. Some artists use materials collected from the material world, such as paper, fabric, natural objects, bits of printed commercial culture. Other artists source collage materials from their own work--perhaps bits of old prints or drawings, or something created for the purpose of collage, such as handmade paper or prints. In any case, the origins of the materials as well as the ways they are transformed bring meaning to the work.

Why are artists attracted to working in collage? As humans we take pleasure in arranging things in everyday life, and at the heart of collage is that impulse. There is freedom in the ways that materials can be moved about, placed and replaced. And it opens up new ideas for composition and presenting ideas that might be harder to reach through more involved techniques.

This episode features the work and comments of two artists working in different ways with collage. Eve Ozer works with images cut from magazines and catalogs to create surreal images composed of human and animal forms, patters, and other objects. Deborah Mersky prints collage elements from a clay surface which are then arranged and rearranged to form the collages image, using botanical and certain symbolic images to create elegant and evocative compositions.

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Websites of the artists featured in this podcast:
Eve Ozer: eveozer.com
Deborah Mersky: deborahmersky.com

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