Emily Dickinson Collage

"Emily Dickinson" used U.S. postage stamps and resin on cradled wood panel 8" x 8" 2021 Signed, titled and dated on back of artwork. Wired and ready to hang. Entitled the “Vortex" series, these energy patterns are based on work from Frank Stella's Black Series of the late 1950s. Each piece from this series is made from approximately 130-150 vintage postage U.S. postage stamps.These pieces are my interpretation of an energy mandala. When I was young, my mother took me to a press proofing for a printed product advertisement. Looking into the glass loop, I was amazed to see that the seemingly solid colors were actually tiny individual dots. Sometime later, while visiting the Art Institute of Chicago, I encountered Georges Seurat’s, A Sunday on LA Grande Jatte, and was introduced to the technique of pointillism. I often use, or reuse, materials outside their normal context and that can be acquired in large quantities. This allows me freedom from overthinking the materials or the process, which is one at a time construction with great repetition. Currently, I use cancelled postage stamps as my primary medium. Where did they originate? Who sent them? What letters did they carry? Each used and canceled postage stamp has a hidden history of its own. Each small stamp represents this unknown story and the expanded web that it was once connected to. My artwork touches on both the individual and the collective, on both the original sender of each correspondence and the society as a whole. I am also influenced by Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious and the interconnectedness of the universe and its correspondence to several schools of eastern thought and mysticism. The postage stamp pattern fields are my interpretation and reinvention of mandalas, or meditative microcosms. The resin, like liquid glass, helps to create and hold together this interconnectedness of the individual elements and at the same time heightens and helps to clarify and define their qualities. Like the ink dots I discovered under the loop, or Seurat’s paint spots, the layered stamps create a blended whole connecting the hundreds or thousands of singular parts.

Collage:Paper on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:8 W x 8 H x 0 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.