MAGAZINE | INSTITUTE | CURRENT ISSUE | ARTIST DIRECTORY | SHOP
CALLS TO ARTISTS
FROM KOLAJ 35
A Game of Skill or Chance?
James Schidlowsky is a creative polymath whose diverse output includes photography, collage, electronic circuitry, and computer programming. Schidlowsky is also involved in the experimental music scene and has collaborated with a wide range of Montreal artists. Despite working in a wide range of mediums, Schidlowsky often employs a strategy familiar to those who play pinball, namely, a delicate blend of skill and chance operations. He is rigorous and meticulous, but his work often allows space for free association and randomness. In Kolaj 35, Clint Enns Interviews James Schidlowsky. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Jean Conner: Collage
at the San Jose Museum of Art in San Jose, California, USA through 25 September 2022. “Jean Conner: Collage” is the first museum solo exhibition of San Francisco-based artist Jean Conner (born 1933, Lincoln, Nebraska), bringing long overdue recognition to the 88-year-old artist’s extraordinary work. The exhibition features collages from the 1950s to the present and highlights Conner’s whimsical imagination and clever critiques of mass media representations of women, war, and the environment. It includes rarely seen materials from the Conner Family Trust, new acquisitions by SJMA, and works from public museums and private collections. MORE
CALL TO ARTISTS
Unconnected Yet
Deadline to submit: Sunday, 31 July 2022. What would you connect if you could? Imagine the world you want to live in as it yet could be. “Unconnected Yet” is an exhibition about the junction between things, a call for art that explores any combination of art and science, or crosscurricular inquiry. “Unconnected Yet” bridges the arts and science communities of Boston and Kolkata bringing art from near and far to five galleries at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata, India. Curators: Todd Bartel, Daniela Esponda, Teri Henderson, Talin Megherian, Pradip Maitra, and Somenath Maity. MORE
Sunday, July 31, 2PM EDT | Free & Online
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FROM KOLAJ 35
Yesterday We Said Tomorrow
In Kolaj 35, Ric Kasini Kadour reviewed collage at Prospect.5 in New Orleans, the city's triennial art exhibition and discussed Wayne Amedèe and Amelia Broussard in “Sugar” at Antenna Gallery; Elliot Hundley’s epic, 40-foot long, 8-foot tall collage at Tulane University’s Newcomb Art Museum; Toronto-based Tau Lewis mandala-like works made of recycled fabrics and Beverly Buchanan’s house assemblages at the Ogden Museum; and Jamal Cyrus’s abstract textile works and Felipe Baeza’s collages at the Contemporary Arts Center. MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Not Always Of Our Choice
Helsinki, Finland. While art has always been present in Elzbieta Zdunek’s life, it was the pandemic and the lockdown when collaging became her main form of expression. Zdunek writes, “Collaging is like life. What we encounter is not always of our choice, people, events, shapes; it is up to us to decide how we combine and interpret those elements. Collaging is taking and reclaiming agency, telling a story instead of allowing it to be told.” MORE
CALL TO ARTISTS
Boris Vian Mail Art Exhibition
Deadline to receive Mail Art in France: Sunday, 21 August 2022. The second edition of “Lettres d’Auzay” opens at the Prieuré d’Auzay in Vendée, France, 23-24 August 2022. “Lettres d’Auzay”, a micro-festival that takes place in the gardens of a family home and which honors the art of correspondence, this year celebrates the French author Boris Vian (1920-1959) and his whimsical universe–literature, surrealism, jazz and pataphysics. As part of this event, the organizers are calling on artists to make Mail Art on the chosen theme: “Boris Vian & His Universe”. Take some time to look into Vian’s special world and create your reflections on this unique polymath. MORE
Sanquhar, Scotland | Click for details
FROM KOLAJ 35
Other People's Memory
A trove of candid snapshots is transformed into an artwork that reads like someone else’s memory. The photographs are cropped, interrupted by others and they repeat, as if on a loop in someone’s mind. Garth Amundson and Pierre Gour describe themselves as “a queer bi-national artist team who have been working together for over three decades.” A portfolio of their work appears in Kolaj 35. MORE
New Publication
Coming Soon
POETRY JOURNAL
PoetryXCollage
Volume One
PoetryXCollage is a printed journal of artwork and writing which operates at the intersection of poetry and collage. We are interested in found poetry, blackout poetry, collage poems, haikus, centos, response collages, response poems, word scrambles, concrete poetry, scatter collage poems, and other poems and artwork that inhabit this world. In this issue: Rosemary Rae, El Cajon, California, USA | Cathy Greenhalgh, London, United Kingdom | Jennifer Roche, Chicago, Illinois, USA | doriana diaz, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA | Thomas Mayer, Berlin, Germany l Chery Chudyk, Kirkland, Washington, USA
POETRY JOURNAL
PoetryXCollage
Volume Two
Each issue of PoetryXCollage presents six movements of work by artists and curators. Page spreads are meant to be free zones of thinking where the contributor has chosen all elements of the layout: font, image place, composition, etc. In this issue: Anthony D. Kelly, Castle Bar, County Mayo, Ireland l Carla Reyes, Astoria, New York, USA l Janice McDonald, Denver, Colorado, USA l Samantha Brown, Blackrock, County Louth, Ireland l Laura Tafe, Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA l Collaborations by Cathy Greenhalgh, Thomas Mayer, Rosemary Rae, Anthony D. Kelly, & Cheryl Chudyk
PoetryXCollage Volume One will be sent automatically to members of the Silver Scissors & Golden Glue Societies and to those who join before August 15th, 2022.
These special subscribers support the work of Kolaj Institute while receiving an item from Kolaj each month.
New Publication
Current Issue
BOOK
Politics in Collage
In a time where the challenges facing us as individuals and communities have grown to seemingly insurmountable levels, further exacerbated by the increasing toxicity of the political climate, artists are using their work to confront these challenges by engaging their viewers in a higher level of discourse. Through a virtual residency, twenty-five artists created collage works examining complex socio-political issues that contemporary society is contending with, in order to spark meaningful dialogue and inspire deeper engagement. MORE
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
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
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
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
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.
