MAGAZINE | INSTITUTE | CURRENT ISSUE | ARTIST DIRECTORY | SHOP
CALLS TO ARTISTS
COLLAGE ON VIEW
The American Way
at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in San Diego, California, USA through 5 February 2023. “Alexis Smith: The American Way” is the first retrospective of California artist Alexis Smith in thirty years. Smith is widely known for her mixed-media collage works which draw heavily on film, literature, and pop culture. Her unique practice has been informed by Conceptual and Pop art and shaped by the Feminist movement of the 1970s. Through the works featured in “The American Way”, Smith presents stories of self-realization and self-transformation—examining the role of these narratives in creating a distinctively American mythology. Featuring work produced throughout the artist’s career, from the 1970s to the 2010s, this exhibition highlights the themes that permeate the artist’s oeuvre, including her interests in gender, identity, and class. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Waxing Poetic
Kelly Schaub at the Art Center of Corpus Christi in Texas, USA, 6 January-25 February 2023. The tag line for this exhibit really should be “elevating the everyday”–from everyday papers transformed through collage to everyday objects altered by the addition of hot wax. Schaub writes, “I feel a lyrical connection with my materials and my two favorite mediums. So, please allow me to wax poetic about simple materials, like paper scraps, and simple objects like a camera or a ball of twine or a children’s block.” MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Art Is My Love Language
Portland, Oregon, USA. Art is Tara Cochrane's love language. It’s how she communicates with the world and makes sense of her life. She makes work about her experiences, observations and feelings. Everything from the most mundane to the most magical gets incorporated somehow, but she often feels particularly inspired by odd juxtapositions, moments of wonder, natural beauty, meaningful coincidences and dreams. She loves using color to evoke mood and imagery to tell abstract tales. In her collage work, she delights in deconstructing the remnants of popular culture and recombining them in the crucible of her imagination. MORE
COLLAGE BOOKS
Exploring Personalities
Canadian artist Chery Holmes reveals how she combines collage with drawing and painting and other mixed media techniques to create dynamic portraits. She discusses fourteen separate approaches to portraiture, using her artistic work as a visual aid to describe her process, and she offers helpful tips and suggestions she has discovered along the way. Illustrated with preliminary sketches and full color images of Chery’s work, this book is a valuable resource and inspiration for anyone looking to include new methods in their portraits of human life. MORE
COLLAGE BOOKS
Spaceball
The soccer ball in this story leaves Earth with a mighty strike of the boot and rockets past every planet. Each planet has a landmark of a famous soccer city in the United Kingdom. See if you can work out which city and soccer club it is! The collage illustrations in this picture book are fun and vibrant and really make the story come alive. MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Asserting Imagination's Role in Life
Winston Salem, North Carolina, USA. Jennie Mejan's work predominantly features women who evoke longing and wistfulness. The subjects are often placed against backdrops just outside reality to assert imagination’s role in life. To Mejan, these works reflect the discomfort of isolation and how your self-concept can be a trap. They’re also about a desire to show your colors, be known and understood. Making and sharing these images has had incredible value for her. She loves how art allows you to skip the small talk and go straight to the depths with the viewer. MORE
CALLS TO ARTISTS
Kolaj Fest New Orleans Call for Papers, Artists & Projects
Deadline is Sunday, 29 January 2023.
LEARN MORE
Folklore & Collage Residency
19-23 March 2023
at the Knoxville Museum of Art
EARLY DEADLINE:
Sunday, 29 January 2023.
LEARN MORE
Collage as Street Art Residency
4-11 June 2023
in New Orleans
EARLY DEADLINE:
Sunday, 12 February 2023.
LEARN MORE
NEW BOOK
NEW BOOK
PoetryXCollage
Volume Three
PoetryXCollage is a printed journal of artwork and writing which operates at the intersection of poetry and collage. Each issue 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 Volume Three: Adam Farcus (Urbana, Illinois, USA) | Carolina Martins (Lisbon, Portugal) | Émilie Karuna (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) | Jenn Arras (Brooklyn, New York, USA) | Julie Byers (Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia) | Kerrie More (Kalispell, Montana, USA).
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 Cheryl 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
PRINT MAGAZINE
Kolaj Magazine relies on our subscribers. Your support of this magazine keeps us going and makes it possible for us to investigate and document collage and to promote a deeper, more complex understanding of the medium and its role in art history and contemporary art.
LAST CHANCE TO SUBSCRIBE IS
29 JANUARY 2023
NEW ISSUE
Kolaj #36
Barbara Bertino's Sailing the Dry Land graces the front cover of Kolaj 36 which we think is an apt metaphor for a print magazine where each issue travels around the world of collage. In the print magazine, we travel from the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada to Rio de Janeiro to Kampala, Uganda to report on the international community of collage artists and what this 21st century art movement is doing. Kelli Bodle takes us back in time to explore the legacy of Italian Proto-Arte Povera Artist Salvatore Meo. We hear from a collective of composers in Peru (all of whom are women) who are making collage heard as well as seen. We get an update on how the U.S. Supreme Court may be changing Fair Use. And we consider the painterly influences and attitudes of collage artists, whether two-bit collage is a sort of minimalism, and how one artist came to love collage in motion. We hope each issue of Kolaj Magazine takes you someplace you've never been. MORE
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
NEW BOOK
Wallflowers: Collage as Street Art
Wallflowers: Collage as Street Art explores the intersection of collage and street art. Christopher Kurts recalls the formation of the Kolaj Street Krewe from its creation at Kolaj Fest New Orleans to a guerilla art project during the COVID-19 pandemic to an artist residency for Street Artists. The book contains examples of collage as street art by twenty-four artists from eight countries. MORE
BOOK
Artists in the Archives
Local history museums, archives, and collections are vital to building healthy communities and to anchoring our understanding of the world around us in the place where we live, work, and play. Collage artists have unique skills that are particularly useful in our historical moment. Artists in the Archives contains artworks and commentary as well as an extensive essay by Ric Kasini Kadour about the project that brought twenty-three artists from seven countries to make twenty-four collage prints referencing history material in the archives of the Henry Sheldon Museum. The essay reflects on the role artists can play in the interpretation and presentation of historic material in light of this history. MORE
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
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
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
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
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
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.
