Collage: Small is the New Big
Essay for an exhibition held April 15, 2016 — June 15, 2016
This was such a nice piece of writing about collage art that I felt it would be good to republish here on Repository Magazine along with some photos of the exhibition held at Nisa Touchon Fine Art Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Artists in the show: Melinda Tidwell, Zach Touchon, Ginnie Gardiner, Matthew Rose, Marsha Balian, Lisa Hochstein, Robert Mars, Zach Collins, Waldemar Strempler, David Wallace, Kareem Rizk, Gary Bibb, Angela Holland, Steven B. Schreiber, Colin Johnson, Evan Clayton Horback, Hope Kroll, Sherry Parker, Frank Elbert Whipple, Joan Schulze, Lanny Quarles, Dennis Parlante & Jonathan Whitfill, Julie Fitzgerald.
When we first moved to Santa Fe in 2014 we rented a commercial space that had two floors. we lived in the top and made a studio out of the first floor. After we found a house to buy, we used the commercial space as the archives for the Collage Museum upstairs and put a gallery dedicated to collage and assemblage on the first floor where we mounted some incredible exhibitions for a couple of years 2015–2017. Eventually we closed because it was just so consuming of money and time.
Press Release
Nano Technology, Mobile Media, Cell Phone Culture, Tiny House Movement, Downsizing, Small Footprint; these are some of the trends in today’s society. In the world of collage art small is king. Due to the kind of materials collage artists use such as books, magazines, old papers, illustrations, etc. the majority of collage materials tend to be roughly the size of a book page. The ergonomic considerations of a book suggest that it be small and able to be handled. The previous century has been rich in paper artifacts and this has allowed artists to develop art forms based on this material.
Small works are more about a conversation among friends than a lecture to a large crowd. With small works the viewer is beckoned to come close to look upon and cherish the small details of the work that communicates through whispers rather than the amplification of large scale. In a small work every little detail takes on significance whether it be a small punctuation mark or the ghost of an image from the back side of the paper.
Small, intimate works focus our vision and make it sharp and clear. Like the study of a poetic work, collage art often references allusions to a broad, rich history beyond itself through the use of paper artifacts containing printed matter, stains, fugitive hand written notation and the patina of use or abuse. Every detail has significance and is part of the content to be deciphered by the astute viewer.
Collage artists form a unique and interesting community. The hunt for found materials is crucial to the process of many collage artists causing them to be sophisticated collectors of things. Their collecting of material artifacts for their artistic appeal and possibilities rather than for rarity or value often makes them keenly aware of popular culture — present and past — with the subtle eye of an anthropological curator.
From an art collector’s point of view, traditionally one often thinks of small works or works on paper as preparatory for larger works on canvas. Small works are often relegated to the department of drawing. But in the case of collage such as seen in this exhibition, these small intimate collages are typically the final work of art, not a study or a preparation for another work. For the collector who is also a bibliophile, collecting collage art should have a special place in their heart and in their collection. Small framed collage works can be collected like books, exhibited in clusters and stored on shelves or like documents, kept unframed in file drawers to be brought out and cherished then returned to the drawer.
As an art of its time, collage art; its imagery, its techniques, its attitude, speaks to our confrontation with a fractured multifarious image of the world in an age of information overload. The activities of sifting, sorting, organizing and prioritizing become the basis and the goal of artistic activity in this hummingbird era of ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder). Collage artists explore the artifacts that have poured out of the cornucopia of modern society using them as grist for the creative mill generating new works of art with materials that have already had their useful life and have been retired from their intended purpose. In the hands of collage artists these materials often achieve poetic stature when their inherent visual qualities are brought to the fore and their former usefulness repurposed.
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