Mixed Media • Various Sizes • Sweet Mabel Gallery
My college roommate, Bevan McShea, became my collage collaborator. Any resemblance to any flowers or skulls, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.
Comments Off on SkullKillin’ It
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Opening Reception: Friday, June 7th, 6ish – 9ish PM In the mid 90s, Bevan McShea and I shared a college room and, consequently, secondhand rubber cement fumes, in a Kutztown University dormitory known as Schuykill Hall. In the mid 10s, we inhabit two sides of the marginally mighty Schuykill River. Now, we’ve combined our aesthetic vision, multiple media, skulls, flowers and Trader Joe’s cookies to create Skullkill Spring. Conveniently, tees and original artwork will be available for sale AND make the perfect gift for dads, grads and Brads. See you there.
This collection of altered books was created by snipping and clipping the respective artists’ respected work from within retrospective books and semi-respectfully reworking the work on the covers. I call the collection Cover Artist, One Man’s Art Ruined by Another.
Now that I’m ankle-deep in another collage course, it’s time to tip my hat and hand. A keen art historian may peek at my past collage work (pictured above) and detect the influence of Henri Matisse, Romare Bearden and Jean-Michel Basquiat. A keener art historian, living in the Baltimore area, would recognize the influence of contemporary artist, Matt Bovie. I have been attracted to, and inspired by, Bovie’s work for many years for it’s strong iconography, bold palette, harmonic compositions and primitive sincerity. Although the work is modern, it seems to encapsulate a mythology spanning generations. Bovie shows and sells his work in Baltimore but doesn’t exhibit or market his art online. Perhaps that relative digital reclusiveness adds to the allure. I am aware of his work only due to a chain of coincidental acquaintances. Although we’ve never met, I peer at his occasional art-related albums on Facebook and admire from afar. If you’d like to learn more about the work of Matt Bovie, wander the streets of Baltimore and hope you run into him.
Today, I embarked upon a weeklong University of the Arts graduate class, focusing on image and text elements in collage. Part of the embarkation (it’s a word, look it up) involves reflecting on why we chose to take the course and what we hope to gain. Reflection initiated: WHY? Last summer, I took a collage class with Dan Schank at the university. I very much enjoyed the course and was anxious to return to the paste well. I’ve also recently been focusing on writing morsels of nonsense as a contributor to WitStream via Twitter, so I thought this might be a nice opportunity to blend the two outlets. Finally, the course’s emphasis on book manipulation parallels a longtime interest and 2007 show titled Withdrawn. WHAT?
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