Artist Highlight

          I begin my collages with a piece of literature. I spend months gathering photographs and images from old books. I start by drawing one horizontal line across the entire piece and one vertical line. This forms four quadrants which I will subdivide into dozens of smaller quadrants, layering tissue papers and book pages, then imagery and photographs. The aim is to create a work of art in the same manner as I think about any story: by tiling images and words; things that I have found and seen in the world atop things that I imagine. I am following an architectural design in each piece, a geometrical exactness which gives an organizing form to the work. I am literally trying to build an idea from the building blocks of old book paper. I adhere these materials to the wooden panel using clear acrylic paint. I then draw geometrical lines and circles and shade them to produce the illusion of three dimensions. Finally, the work is covered in a polymer acrylic varnish which protects the materials from UV light and preserves them from aging.

          Art is a way for me to study the time and world that I live in. It is where I work my ideas into clarity with experimentation, questioning and guesses. The challenge of poetry and collage are the same: elaborate a richness for the soul from a simple form, suppressing everything that is useless.