A Million Stories Waiting to be Told
Collage originated from the French word “coller,” which means to glue. A collage can be a mix of many things (paper, painting, newspaper, canvas, etc.) glued together to create a unique image. Images created with “bits and pieces” can tell powerful stories. Collage lends itself to all sorts of inquiry and exploration. Things become connected through association, emotions and/or memory. Sometimes a story is intentional; sometimes it reveals itself to the maker.
Prompt: Collect images, patterns, and text from books, magazines or the recycling bin. Use fabric scraps, doodles, photographs and drawings. Cut out whatever speaks to you, and create a visual image that tells a “story.”
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Matthew Taylor’s Citibabble’s Revenge, 2016
Learn More About Collage Art
Wengechi Mutu
Kenyan-American artist Wengechi Mutu explores contemporary and global issues including self-image, and cultural constructs. Mutu makes powerful collages out of ethnographic photography, 19th-century medical illustrations, and magazine pornography. She calls herself “an irresponsible anthropologist and irrational scientist,” creating art while exploring questions of self-image, gender constructs, cultural trauma and environmental destruction.
Jacinta Bunnell
Local artist Jacinta Bunnell creates collages that are introspective and highly personal. “I collage photos of ‘little me’ into environments filled with images from the natural world and things that make me feel joy.”
Matthew Thomas Taylor
Kingston-based artist and co-owner of the idea garden, Matthew Taylor, creates digital photo collages or photomontages as a springboard for analyzing where we are as a global society: how we came to our beliefs, and the work we need to do to better understand each other and our impact on the planet.
Lorna Simpson
Brooklyn-based artist Lorna Simpson came to prominence in the 1980s with her pioneering approach to conceptual photography. Simpson’s early work – particularly her striking juxtapositions of text and staged images – raised questions about the nature of representation, identity, gender, race and history that continue to drive the artist’s expanding and multi-disciplinary practice today.
Lorna Simpson’s Cut-Up Portraits Evoke the Complexity of Identity
Without really trying, Lorna Simpson, 2019
Wengechi Mutu’s History Trolling, 2014
Jacinta Bunnell’s fun-a-day 2020 series
Wangechi Mutu, Even, 2014.
Jacinta Bunnell’s fun-a-day 2020 series
Matthew Taylor’s Citibabble’s Revenge, 2016
Lyra night sky styled in NYC, Lorna Simpson, 2020
