Collage
There are plenty of folks who don’t think that playing around with magazines and my infamous pair of little pink Fiskar scissors is real art. And that’s okay, because there is a whole other faction of society who think my collages are my best work.

For me, my paper-and-scissors collages (as opposed to mixed-media works) are the building blocks of my evolution as an artist. The idea that the entire world and everything in it is my palette is very liberating, and I had to get over the idea that incorporating another’s photography, art, graphic, or text was ‘stealing.’ I’m not claiming that the found pieces
were my creation, but I am absolutely using them to create statements
of my own.

Some of those statements are asking my audience to analyze images they see every day. Taking familiar phrases and pictures out of context reminds us how advertising and other media manipulate ideas, and lets me have my time to manipulate ideas as well.

Other times, I am working in a very gut-instinctive way, and when I pull back, a statement seems so bald and horrifying that I want to get rid of it. What I have done has nowhere to hide unless it is in a larger piece, where I get away with my sick humour and ironic questions by softening or buffering the statements with other layers. But in the paper collages, it’s just right there. I don’t get rid of it. I’m very comfortable with acknowledging the sick sides of society and the darker parts of my own imagination. I don’t like to shrink from reality. I have seen heaven and I have seen hell and I have lived in both. I want to challenge my audience to face facts, or to see layers they may not notice underneath the ordinary disguises of life. I want to shake things up, but I’m a warm and sweet person who finds it hard to be abrasive. So that side of me comes out in collage. Some have called it my ‘in your face’ side.

But not everything I react to or question is so raw. Many of my collages
are simply surreal. I like to find the dreamy and weird parts of life that feel gentle and sometimes melancholy and sometimes beautiful. The human spirit is so overloaded with information that sometimes the antidote is just to stop at a small snippet of that information and see it as a moment frozen. I find these moments deeply comforting. All the clatter stills and I can
focus on just one sensation. Some of my collages feel like slices of time, juxtaposed in unexpected corners. You might feel a bit lost, the surroundings may feel like a dream, but just like a slow amble home
on a late fall afternoon, you don’t have to think or organize anything,
just observe.

My collages are also built around poetry, my own and the words I find poetic in papers, books and magazines. Song lyrics can provide inspiration. I am frequently asked if my collages are done in Photoshop. No, no, no. I cut each piece patiently with my little pink Fiskars. And while it doesn’t take me months on end to create one paper collage, it does take some time and gentle labour to painstakingly cut each piece. I call this labour ‘snipping’ with great affection, because the combined snipping and culling sessions- where I unearth the images I want and start cutting them out- is one of the most soothing ways I can spend my time. Snipping can get dull but I welcome it- it feels very soothing to hear the little snip-snip-snip sound and to pile up the pieces I would like to use.

Life Imitating Art asked me to describe my collages. This is it, in a nutshell:
In my art, I manipulate markers of cultural identity such as advertising, celebrity, images, poetry, and art. By removing these tokens from their context, I add, take away from, or alter their meanings. Only by playing with different ideas can we be certain that we are thinking for ourselves…. Creativity means having a vivid, intense life, and it is the birthright of everyone.