The collage artist is a thief, a baby stealer, someone who in plain daylight, and with pride, walks up to a stroller and walks away with a child. The child is raised in the isolation of the studio and put back into the world and left to defend itself on the pages of a magazine or the walls of a gallery, or some other nasty places children get themselves lost these days.
The collage artist is a heartless parent bent on the type of play that reckless children practice. These parents treat their children like action figures: they disfigure and mutilate their features, they pose them in awkward and unwilling positions. Like dolls the children are dressed up, forced to wear make-up, to switch limbs and outfits. But in all of this, that reckless parent, the collage artist, only hopes to draw out an unseen elegance.
The world is overpopulated. There are too many images. Images reproduce too easily. Pictures deserve to be stolen, mutilated, cut, pasted, and repurposed. Property is abundant yet ownership is scarce. Collage is permission to liberate private property which sits idly in the public eye.
The results are equal part nature and nurture. The same child could be stolen by many different parents and raised differently under the hands of each artist. Some children will learn to speak their mind and shout slogans, while other go mute, pout, and languish, suspended in the void.
The parenting techniques briefly mentioned here are recommended to all, can be attempted by anyone, and the results, as you can see, are fruitful when performed with care.
A family of collages does not arrive by choice, or from agreement between parties, but is carefully coerced into being with a knife.