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CALLS TO ARTISTS
CALL TO ARTISTS
New Data/New Dada
Deadline: Monday, 1 August 2022. For an exhibition at Stone Valley Arts at Fox Hill in Poultney, Vermont, USA 16 September-23 October, artists are invited to submit collage-based works that explore, echo, translate or reinvent Dada. The Dada movement was a strain of avant-garde art, characterized by its use of unorthodox materials, use of popular imagery, and collaborative juxtapositions, and driven by its anti-establishment ethic. The juror is Tara Verheide. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Complex Muses
At the Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, Massachusetts, USA through 4 September 2022. “Complex Muses” is an exhibit of 12 collage-based works guest-curated by Massachusetts artist Todd Bartel. Each artist chose a piece from the ACM@50+1 exhibit and used it as inspiration from which to create new artwork, using a variety of techniques that expand the definition of what it means to “collage.” Bartel notes, “This exhibit celebrates a variety of techniques, including drawing, painting, papier collè, sewn collage, digital collage, assemblage, and paper sculpture.” MORE
Schwitters' Army Reunion Weekend
The Schwitters’ Army Collection of Collage Art at MERZ Gallery is a permanent collection of international collage art curated by Ric Kasini Kadour in January and February 2020. On Friday 9 September to 10 September 2022, Veterans of The Schwitters' Army and their friends will gather in Sanquhar, Scotland for a weekend of weekend of activities that include a celebratory brunch, the release of the Schwitters' Army Book, the unveiling of a Historical Marker, a film screening, and collage making. Everyone is welcome. MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Pressure, Friction, & Time
Albany, California, USA. Michael Shemchuk’s work has evolved over the last two decades, shaped directly by a close engagement with material and process. In 2017, Shemchuk was inspired to further his pursuit of abstraction and design by streamlining his materials and employing process as integral to his work. The result is his Surface Tension series, which is based on an organic process involving water, paper, pressure, friction, and time. MORE
CALL TO ARTISTS
Da Vinci Selection
Deadline: Saturday, 1 October 2022. In the Renaissance, transformations were quite evident in culture, society, economy, politics, gastronomy and religion. Our current Renaissance is characterized by the transition to a digital world signifying an evolution in relation to the structures of the contemporary before the influence of the virtual world, the term is more commonly employed to describe its effects in the arts, philosophy and sciences. Artists using collage or illustration as a medium are invited to apply to exhibit in Brussels, Belgium. MORE
FROM KOLAJ 35
Vroom, Vroom Collage
At first glance, Heidi Mraz’s collages of classic automobiles look like clever collage paintings where bits of paper are used instead of oil or acrylic, but to see them only as that is to miss the point of them entirely. Mraz builds these archives through painstaking research and a passion for documenting and sharing stories about automobiles. A portfolio of Heidi Mraz's work appears in Kolaj 35. MORE
See more from the printed magazine.
Calls to Artists from Kolaj Institute
Deadline: July 17, 2022
LEARN MORE
Deadline: July 31, 2022
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Current Issue
Our goal with every issue is that Kolaj Magazine is essential reading for anyone interested in the role of contemporary collage in art, culture, and society. We not only hope you enjoy the articles and images in Kolaj 35, we hope it leads you to asking great questions.
PRINT MAGAZINE
Kolaj 35
From the Scottish Highlands to the shores of Lake Ontario to Mombasa, Kenya, Kolaj 35 brings the wide-world of collage to your doorstep: Ellsworth Kelly‘s postcard collages, uncollage in action, collage en plein air, the practice of collecting fragments, Black collage in Baltimore, the wild artwork of a Montreal-based mushroom and pinball enthusiast, collage at New Orleans' city-wide art triennial, and more. On the cover is a collaborative collage in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, a small gesture of hope for a more peaceful world in the future. Each issue of Kolaj Magazine shows how collage artists are making their way through the world. International in scope, we explore all aspects of collage and its impact on society and culture. MORE
Kolaj 35 is sent automatically to members of the Silver Scissors & Golden Glue Societies.
These special subscribers support the work of Kolaj Institute while receiving an item from Kolaj each month.
Recent Publications
SPECIAL EDITION
World Collage Day 2022
In honor of World Collage Day, 14 May 2022, Kolaj Magazine is releasing a special edition of the magazine.The Special Edition is full of Cut-Out Pages and stories from inspiring collage artists.The printed magazine also includes an interview with 2022 World Collage Day Poster Artist Erin McCluskey Wheeler. MORE
BOOK
Empty Columns Are a Place to Dream
A companion book to the project of the same name, Ric Kasini Kadour unpacks what monuments are and their role in our communities. The book shows what happens when collage artists reimagine monuments as sites of truth and reconciliation. The book features the collages of eighteen international artists made a series of collages that reimagined the empty column in the center of Birr, County Offaly, Ireland. MORE
ZINE
Identiblocks: Portrait #001
by Mark Vargo, 2022. Vargo's project pushes the boundaries of traditional paper collage into an interactive, dynamic and 3-dimensional space allowing individuals to both create and perform their own collage mask that represents their identity, vision and emotions. MORE
BOOK
The Money $how: Cash, Labor, Capitalism & Collage
The Money $how juxtaposes contemporary artwork against fragments of history and literature as a way of showing how collage can help us deconstruct culture and understand the world differently. Artists collage dollar bills into flowers and mine material remnants to tell stories about home economics. MORE
NEW BOOK
Oh, Money! Money!
by Eleanor H. Porter
Kolaj Institute is pleased to announce the publication of Oh, Money! Money!by Eleanor H. Porter and illustrated by a collective of collage artists. In Porter’s 1918 novel, a Chicago multi-millionaire struggles to decide to whom he should leave his money. The book is a time capsule of early 20th century American life with a strong focus on the lives of women and observations about material culture and communities before the rampant consumerism of the 1920s and the Great Depression. To illustrate the book, Kolaj Institute organized a residency that brought together ten artists who worked collaboratively to make sixty-three collages that interpret Porter’s novel for a 21st century audience. MORE
BOOK
Radical Reimaginings
The curators of the 96-page book invited artists who use collage in their practice to put forward a work of art that offers a visual narrative that speaks to the unprecedented change unfolding in 2020. An essay by Ric Kasini Kadour reflects upon collage's unique ability to imagine new realities. Forty artists from nine countries and multiple Indigenous peoples—Salish-Kootenai/Métis-Cree/Sho-Ban, Tlingit/Nisga’a, Oglala/Lakota, and Seneca Nation—offer a variety of perspectives. The voices of Black, Latinx, Native, and white Americans mingle with those from Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Canada, France, and Germany. Artwork is accompanied by a statement in which the artists describe how they want to reimagine the world. MORE
BOOK
Collage Magic
by Emma Anna
Part autobiography, part fantasy, Emma Anna’s vision of The New Old World (aka The NOW) fuses vintage ephemera with modern imaging technologies. Emma shapes this strange world by using the pen tool from Adobe Photoshop as her magic wand, in the process declaring herself to be a “collage magician”. Part artist book, part document of art making, Collage Magic, from La Casa Verde Editions, is Emma Anna’s journey through magic and art. MORE
BOOK
Revolutionary Paths
When the collage is presented in exhibition, it is often done so without the critical framework granted other mediums. In "Revolutionary Paths: Critical Issues in Collage", exhibition curator Ric Kasini Kadour presents examples of collage that represent various aspects and takes on the medium. Each work in the exhibition represents the potential for deeper inquiry and further curatorial exploration of the medium. MORE
BOOK
Cultural Deconstructions
Collage is unique as a medium in that it uses as its material artifacts from the world itself. To harvest those fragments, the artist must first deconstruct culture; they must select, cut, and remove the elements they do not wish to use and then reconstruct work that tells a new story. In "Cultural Deconstructions: Critical Issues in Collage", exhibition curator Ric Kasini Kadour presents examples of collage artists who are deconstructing identity as a way to critique culture. MORE
COLLAGE BOOK
Tissue Box:
A Pandemic Response
Boite à mouchoir: Une réponse à la pandémie. In Spring 2020, as the world was going into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Quebec Collagiste Virginie Maltais felt a deep need for a point of reference. Her solution was a project that asked collage artists from around the world to make a collage using the top of a tissue box. "Small projects are important. You regain your courage and hope when you start and manage to finish something. There is no small project. We do big projects with lots of little steps. Step by step, we move forward. Together. And it is all of these small steps, together, that led to the creation of this book." Maltais worked with Kolaj Institute and Kasini House to produce a bilingual book about the project. MORE
COLLAGE BOOK
transitional MOMENTS
transitional MOMENTS: restoring equilibrium through the art of collage includes one hundred collages selected from over 2000 submissions created from 600 collage packets sent to artists around the world for World Collage Day 2021 by the Arizona Collage Collective. transitional MOMENTS "reflects our current state of uncertainty as we wrestle with feeling constrained, disoriented and suspended in air between what was and what will be. Yet, these thresholds, unsettling as they are, can be spaces of great creativity and transformation," writes ACC's Suzanne Winkel. MORE
COLLAGE BOOK
Unfamiliar Vegetables: Variations in Collage
Unfamiliar Vegetables is a collection of collage where each of the fifty artists interpreted, in their own way, Carlotta Bonnecaze’s 1892 Carnival float design Familiar Vegetables. Project organizer Christopher Kurts observed, “Unfamiliar Vegetables is an experiment in controlled chaos….tiny variations within each artist’s creative sphere accumulate until the outcomes are as unique as the people creating them.” MORE
COLLAGE COMMUNITIES
The International Directory of Collage Communities
The 104-page book is a survey of collage networks, guilds, communities, and projects as well as online efforts and groups focused on collage research. For each community, the directory presents their key activities, mission, how to join, and a bit of their history. Copious images illustrate the book. MORE
Our goal with every issue is that Kolaj Magazine is essential reading for anyone interested in the role of contemporary collage in art, culture, and society. Each issue of Kolaj Magazine is dedicated to reviewing and surveying contemporary collage with an international perspective. We are interested in collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a 21st century art movement.
