To Glue

I'm VERY excited to announce my first artwork publication forthcoming from Harbinger Asylum, a publication from Transcendent Zero Press.  Four of my collages will be featured in the upcoming edition of the journal.  I'm also excited to say that Harbinger Asylum will also be featuring two of my poems in the same issue.  Both of the poems are actually about the same subject, so I think they will fit together nicely.

Here's a link to the Transcendent Zero Press website:

http://transcendentzeropress.org/

Collage art is something very near and dear to my heart.  I had to take an art elective while I was working on my undergrad, so I took a class I knew nothing about that was titled "Narrative Collage" in the course catalog.  It turned out to be my favorite class I took as a college student.  The class focused on the Dada and Surrealist movements and how art changed and developed during that time in order for people to cope with a world that was in the midst of the chaos of war.  Artists and writers like Max Ernst and Rene Magritte were changing the definition of art by creating tensions between image and text in their work.  Artists were creating "readymades" or ordinary objects that were changed or altered in some way and called art.  Artists were creating art from "found objects," putting together collages from unexpected materials such as tickets, newspapers, magazines, and more.  This particular class focused on what has recently been termed "narrative collage," a loose literary term that refers to works that combine elements of image and text.  We created our own collages and 3D art pieces as well as a whole work of narrative collage that we self-published with Lulu.  An excerpt from my narrative collage, which was called Lights that Grow Dim over Time, was published in the IU South Bend literary magazine and I also read a portion from it at a live poetry reading in college.

My 3D art project made from Goodwill finds.  It's about my younger brother and  I titled it Baby.

My collage journal that I used in my narrative collage class and beyond.

My narrative collage piece about a trip I took to Florida in college complete with my own original photography.

Inside Lights that Grow Dim over Time.

I loved that class so much that when I got to my final year of graduate school and had to start working on my thesis, I proposed a narrative collage project to my panel of poets, fiction writers, and scholars.  Fortunately for me, they approved the project and my final thesis was a 100-page narrative collage I titled Like Las Vegas.  The project was about a young girl caring for her younger brother in the midst of a tumultuous family life.  The story was told through text and anatomical images and diagrams.

My graduate thesis (with original photography).

Two of the collages that will appear in this magazine are from my graduate thesis project.

The other two are collages I've put together in the years since my college studies.

Did you know the term "collage" comes from the French word "coller" which means "to glue"?

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to check out some back issues of Harbinger Asylum to help support emerging artists and writers, small presses, and the art and literary community as a whole!