Dreams are phantasmagoric; journeys made up of wildly variant scenes that meld into one other. Visually, they morph, change and shimmer. Dreams have been of fascination to artists for centuries. Jak Rabbit, a.k.a. Jess Kitowski, toys with collage in her attempts to make sense of her unconscious states.

“My collages delve into the surreal mainly because I’m a vivid dreamer,” says Rabbit. “I always have strange dreams and these collages help me find a way to bring them to life.”

Collage was something she observed at a young age within the family. Soon, she was shredding magazines from around the house too.

“My great Aunt Clara would create these beautiful collages from old National Geographics (the ones with very thin pages) and I loved the texture that she would create from them,” says Rabbit. “My pieces turned out nothing like my great Aunt’s, but it sparked within me my love for collages.”

Her inspirations include her “strange dreams, other artist’s and musicians’ lives and works, human and animal rights, science and technology.”

About a year ago, Rabbit started to use PicsArt. Digital tools rekindled her creative verve.

“By using this digital medium, my skills and sense of style have improved, allowing me to wildly unleash my imagination,” says Rabbit who works wonders with color. She’s inspired by vintage photography and film with their warm, saturated colors. Likewise the movie Beetlejuice accounts for many of her characters being blue.

“Remember the blue-colored receptionist with the ‘Miss Argentina’ sash? She is the big inspiration behind that. I just fell in love with her color scheme. She looked so surreal,” says Rabbit. “My significant other inspired me to incorporate the gold texture. He advised me it would give my pieces a more luxurious appeal and I just fell in love with giving people actual golden hair.”

If her visual art weren’t enough, Jak Rabbit’s is also a killer musician.

“Writing songs and making collages go hand in hand for me. Each deals with layering of different textures, manipulating sounds and images to create new meaning, and expressing emotion with words and color to create passion.”

She will sometimes even add her own personal lyrics into a piece. “When I quote others I’m usually making a piece centered around them. The rest I write myself, which can be lyrics from songs I’ve written or poems that the piece inspired or little stories (like with ‘After the war…’).”

Below, Jak Rabbit explains her process and her three favorite works and the stories behind them.

The Process

“First of all, always start with a high-resolution photograph. Think, ‘the better the input, the better the output.’ I utilize the collage background tool all the time. I start off with a blank white canvas and then add images (usually vintage images that are black and white) that evoke some sort of deep feeling or emotion within me. I also like to use images where a person has an intriguing expression or position. It’s more interesting to manipulate. After, I juxtapose the images the way I like, then I add color and texture — my favorite part. I tend to color my characters blue, but sometimes green, because they look more alien-like. Sometimes I’ll throw in little puns or funny elements like a strawberry head or place people in weird positions. To finish off all the pieces I use the Paper Effect to give it a bit more texture, then add warmth with the Cross Process Effect and then use the Adjust Tool to get the colors just the way I like.”

1. “After The War…”

“This is one of my earlier pieces but I love it a lot because I blended multiple images to create the scenery. The girls are Ziegfeld girls photographed by the great Alfred Cheney Johnston. I love the way he photographed them partially naked with only bits and pieces of clothing (like just wearing heels or a shawl and nothing else). The zebra, of course, adds the surreal element creating more intrigue and thus inspired this short story: ‘After the war we stayed in our estate with Zelda our zebra. Our only clothes was the skin we were in and we buried our feet into the rubble imagining it was the sandy beaches of Normandy. Almost everything was wiped out of our families’ existence except the portrait of mother when she was our age. Now it’s kept preserved among the ashes and cracked paint, burning its memory into the old wall.’”

2. “Peaceful Protest”

“This piece is simple but it gives a strong statement, I think. A lot of protesting was taking place around the time I made this. The media seemed to portray only the violent protesters, which was not the whole the truth, so I wanted to make my own version of a peaceful protest. The image shows two men in gas masks on the far left and right throwing tear gas and in the midst of it is two Buddhist monks meditating, peacefully.”

3. “The Overwhelming Truth”

“It is said that ‘ignorance is bliss’ and that may be true because the truth can feel overwhelming, but at the same time ‘the more you know, the more you grow’ and the truth, while sometimes hard to swallow, can be quite a beautiful thing. It changes you when you learn the truth about something. Either you can deny it or you can accept it and move on. This piece illustrates someone being so overwhelmed by the truth that they cover it up with their hands.”

Expression, not repression

“It is unhealthy to bottle things up inside and I definitely understand that now. Creating collages is something that I’ll do until the day I die because I get so much pleasure in creating things. It is important to me to have accessible tools to create art. It just depends on your imagination and how much you are willing to challenge yourself.”