Collage artist and novelist Kevin Sampsell described his foray into the Wild World of Collage in an essay in Issue 11 of Kolaj Magazine.
Instead of writing, I started spending hours each night cutting and pasting. I embraced [John] Stezaker’s quote about collaging in the evening: “I work at night because that’s when I get tired and start to lose control.”
After a couple of months, I started to manipulate the images more and use fewer words. Some of the collages prior to this were more like visual poems than collages. I didn’t see many other contemporary collagists using words and I was a little concerned that other artists saw the text as distracting to the visuals, maybe cheesy or amateurish. I felt similar to how I felt when I starting taking my writing more seriously many years ago—that I wanted to be taken seriously and I wanted to dive deep into it. I joined a bunch of collage pages on Facebook. I messaged with a few people I admired. I posted some of my collages and started getting feedback. I became Facebook friends with some of my favourite collagists. My Facebook friends became this exciting combination of my writer friends and a bunch of my favourite collage artists.
Kevin Sampsell lives and works in Portland, Oregon, USA.
This article originally appeared in Issue Eleven. To read the entire article and other writing about the world of collage, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj or PURCHASE ISSUE ELEVEN.
Image:
Don’t Don’t
by Kevin Sampsell
Courtesy of the artist