Born to Make Toast Collage

Collage, is informed by life going on in a period in time. It started, as a “named”art form during the Modernist period in the early 1920’s, particularly DaDa. I’m influenced by simple paper materials magazines, used papers, books from charity shops and ex-library books. The news, film, portraiture, particularly women, from art history, abstractions and online groups have kept my practice going since 2012.. The word “feminism” came to me via my daughter’s post graduate studies. We live in Ireland. Island life is a different experience from life in America where bridges, overpasses, complicated roads, flight, boats and trains all create a sound track for life. Clouds are one of my favourite natural phenomena. They appear in my collage quite often. Overlapping groups of people file before my eyes when I’m working with paper - impressions and fragments of sights I’ve experienced factor in through memory. I love paper and I love communicating via collage. Docentry, college teaching and working with my husband on his art practice (in the States) have fleshed out my understanding of composition and space. I live white space in art a d graphic design but I don’t employ it very often in my work. My work is dense and often strange, in that objects may appear in unfamiliar context. There are undertones of the quietly subversive in collage. The effects might call up a fond memory or uncomfortably awkward moment where there were no words . Simple materials allow for random samplings of the everyday, ridiculous pairings and desires represented by the dark side and animals. People are transported, by dirigible, from one horror to another in one series. Playing with art history places time-honored faces in contemporary vignettes. Edges are important as are associations with the mundane and personal. Born and raised in NJ, USA, I spent a great deal of time in museums. My father worked in a museum, so wandering through galleries and spending time with adults was a wonderful part of growing up. Travel and moving brought more stimulation and variety to collage-making - a swift way to record time and place. We moved to Ireland with our 2 children in 1987. Landscape and island clouds dominate life in Ireland. Surreal on a beautiful day.