MAGAZINE | INSTITUTE | CURRENT ISSUE | ARTIST DIRECTORY | SHOP
CALLS TO ARTISTS
COLLAGE ON VIEW
9th Annual Texas Juried Exhibition
At Artspace111 in Fort Worth, Texas, USA, 17 July-27 August 2022. Sixty-two works by fifty-eight artists were selected from over 1,600 submissions for the 9th Annual Texas Juried Exhibition, including a work by Houston-based collagist, Brad Forsythe. The works were selected by Daisha Board, owner and director of Daisha Board Gallery in Dallas. Ms. Board said that her role as a curator “is to curate through a wide lens [that] is accessible, affordable, intersectional, intergenerational and is able to reach lots of people in and outside the art world.” MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Nourishing Aesthetic Pleasure
Auckland, New Zealand. Naomi Azoulay aspires for beauty, harmony and balance to convey a nourishing aesthetic pleasure. Working with other artists’ art as her palette enables her to connect deeply with the art that she loves while finding her own visual voice in the process. In other words, she expresses herself through colour, pattern and texture by quoting art that is meaningful to her. MORE
FROM KOLAJ 35
Different Ideas from Lived Experiences
In the artwork of Mombasa, Kenya artist Anthony Muisyo, colorful digital compositions mix with sheng, a Swahili and English-based creole popular with young people in Kenya. Muisyo is part of a large movement of artists in Kenya who use digital collage to share their world. A portfolio of his work appears in Kolaj 35. MORE
Thursday, August 11th, 2022, 6PM EDT | Free & Online
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COLLAGE ON VIEW
Future Places
At Susquehanna Art Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA through 16 October 2022. For it's 7th Annual Juried Exhibition, the museum asked artists, "What does a better future look like to you?" The Museum believes that artwork addressing this theme can bring the viewer one step closer to imagining a better world. Common themes found in "Future Places" include the importance of preserving the environment, development of new inclusive technologies, and the desire for a more equitable society. The works were selected by juror Dr. Julia Wosk. MORE
FROM KOLAJ 35
Collaging En Plein Air
En plein air (French for "outdoors" or "in the open") has a long association with painting. In Kolaj 35, Sarah Cowling from London, Ontario, Canada writes about experience of joining fellow en plein air painters outside to make collage. "I quickly realized that collage outdoors had to be approached in a completely different way from collage indoors." MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Complicit with Chance
Pierre-Paul Pariseau at the Maison de la Culture Ahuntsic-Cartierville in Montreal, Quebec, Canada through 16 September 2022. Evoking Surrealism and Pop Art, Pierre-Paul Pariseau’s creative work invites us into a world of images where anything is possible. From the visual articulation of his thoughts, moods and emotions emanate dreamlike scenes and strange theatrical dramas that remain accessible. Happy coincidences and anecdotal events inspire the artist to create a phantasmagoria that he translates into images made of bright colors, surprising juxtapositions and hypnotizing reveries that are always convincing. MORE
CALL TO ARTISTS
Collage & Illustration–The Awakening
Deadline: Sunday, August 28, 2022. During this project-driven residency, artists will explore collage as illustration and collectively produce a series of collages that illustrate Kate Chopin’s 1899 novel, The Awakening. As a group, artists will analyze the story, discuss themes, uncover symbols, ask questions, and visually interpret the text for a 21st century audience. The Awakening touches on 19th century feminist, identity, and societal themes that are still relevant today. After the residency, Kolaj institute will publish The Awakening using the illustrations made during the residency as a way of bringing this important, historical book to 21st Century readers. MORE
Sanquhar, Scotland | Click for details
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.
