As Kolaj magazine co-founder Ric Kasini Kadour says in an editorial in Kolaj magazine: “Collage is an enormous tree, its branches as widespread and diverse as its roots.” Collage has a rich history creating community and this art form has been used to process unimaginable world and individual events. Collage artists demonstrate what salvage, collaboration, creativity, and healing can look like. Join us to celebrate scissors, ephemera, and glue.
The jurors for “Piecing It Together” were Kellette Elliott, co-founder of the Pacific Northwest Collage Collective and teacher; Beth I. Robinson, Kolaj magazine featured artist and conservator at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; and Judy Vogland, artist represented by RiverSea Gallery in Astoria and Sitka Center for Art and Ecology guest instructor.
Portland, Oregon artist Addie Boswell is a multidisciplinary artist and author who in recent years has used plastic refuse, trash, and materials gleaned from her Portland neighborhood and beach clean ups as her primary artistic mediums. Her art “captures the dissonance of the present, with beauty and degradation intertwined,” which is beautifully realized in Monarch Graveyard exhibited in “Piece It Together.”
Vancouver, Washington artist Tim Klein creates a specialized and unusual form of collage art by using jigsaw puzzles manufactured with same-cut patterns which he combines to create surreal composite images. His two images in “Piece It Together,” The Mercy-Go-Round (Sunshine and Shadow) and Home in the Mountains, reveal the bizarre, sometimes unsettling effects achieved by recombining the interchangeable puzzle pieces.
Eugene, Oregon artist Sarah Rose regards her art making as “an opportunity to process her experiences of wonder, fear, hope, and heartache.” In “Piecing It Together,” she exhibits Protect Your Light: Sisters, part of a mixed media collage series using pages from a photography book titled Women Seeing Women. Here she celebrates the paradoxes and power of femininity, both its strength and fragility.
Springfield, Oregon artist Sheary Clough Suiter, who has worked largely in encaustic on wood panel, incorporates stitching and reclaimed textiles into her recent work, reflecting her interest in a more sustainable art practice. For “Piecing It Together,” she displays a work drawn from an installation she created called I Never Played with Dolls. Her image of a baby’s face, with its open expression, alludes to non-binary ways of being and thinking.