Spotlight on Collage Artist Trading Card Artist Sophie Duncan
Sophie Duncan seeks to cut the world apart and put it back together in a new way through collage. She uses paper from all different places and found objects of any kind. Common themes in her art include home, love, family, and nature. In addition to making the world a brighter, more colourful place, Duncan is motivated by pressing global issues including climate change and as a biologist, works to communicate science through art.
Duncan was featured in Collage Artist Trading Cards Pack 6.
Collage Artist Trading Card packs are a tool for discovering contemporary, fine art collage. Each card is a full colour, 5.5” x 3.5” postcard with rounded corners. An example of an artist’s work is on the front of the card and the artist’s public contact information is on the back.
We asked Duncan some questions about her work.
What drives you to make art?
I am a plant biologist who loves experiencing the tactile world. Whether it is touching plants or paper, I learn through taking things apart and putting them back together. I am also motivated by using art as a tool to reveal complexity and layers that contribute to identify and issues of social justice. I love bright colours and I treat everything like a canvas, even using my wardrobe to experiment with different colour and pattern combinations. I am a compulsive doodler and cannot hold a pen with having it sketch something. I love words and the alphabet and enjoy finding ways to give words and letters new dimensions through art. I can write the alphabet a million times and it never gets old—there are always new angles and curves that make it exciting. I would describe myself as someone who thrives when I can experience the world with all of my senses in its most vibrant, pungent, and loud form.
What was the inspiration behind Blue Skies?
Often the themes of home and nature are at play in my work. Blue Skies is one of the first pieces where I fell in love with creating skies from many shades of blue to create a feeling of texture and dept. For me, the piece represents a technicolor, fairy tale place in the sky, barely grounded in reality. I love vibrant colours and playing with people’s expectations for how the world looks. Although the cloud is green, and made of the same material as the mountains, it is still a cloud and in the sky. Although nothing about the image necessarily makes sense (or obeys the laws of gravity), it still feels right.
Can you recall making Blue Skies?
I enjoy reading magazines with an X-Acto knife and scissors in hand. I had some spring issues of magazines that were very bright and floral. I began with creating several piles of cut out pieces of colours and fell in love with the blue pile. After I had prepared my piles of paper, the actual construction of the piece was very brief. I just let me hands do the work and before I knew it, it was done.
I was in the middle of moving and staying in this awful dingy concrete building while waiting to move into my new residence. I had a large stack of magazines that I was going to have to leave behind. I needed to create a sense of home, brightness, and whimsy while I was in this period of transition and creating Blue Skies allowed me a moment of escape.
What other collage are you making?
Blue Skies was my second or third collage that I had ever made. Since then, I have expanded into many different types of paper work. I frequently make pieces similar to Blue Skies that are based on instinct and imagination. I also have completed several furniture pieces including doors, tables, boxes, vases, and paper-weights. In addition, I have completed and am working on several collages that use the medium of collage to explore issues of equity and identity including a piece relating sea-level rise to the human body, a piece exploring Christian, Muslim, and Jewish identities in Medieval Spain, and a piece exploring how the Roman Empire’s trade networks created a situation where the Romans used and celebrated imported plants but resisted acceptance of non-Roman people. I am currently working on a project that explores how the Western system of plant classification and scientific study recognizes predominantly male, Western biologists at the expense of indigenous cultures, lands, and traditional practices.
About Collage Artist Trading Cards
Collage Artist Trading Card packs are a tool for discovering contemporary, fine art collage. Each card is a full colour, 5.5” x 3.5” postcard with rounded corners. An example of an artist’s work is on the front of the card and the artist’s public contact information is on the back.
PURCHASE COLLAGE ARTIST TRADING CARDS
About Sophie Duncan
Sophie Duncan grew up in Phoenix, Arizona and currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Colour is at the heart of her work. In addition to making paper collages and prints, she has been commissioned to make 3D pieces which include coffee tables, collage murals on doors, and boxes. In addition to making the world a brighter, more colourful place, Sophie is motivated by pressing global issues including climate change and as a biologist, works to communicate science through art. She recently completed a project that visualized sea level rise in Rhode Island through a life-sized collage, relating sea level rise to the human body. She also makes custom furniture pieces and is happy to work with people based on the color palette and design of their choice.
You can see more of her collage and purchase them at www.folkmade.org/sophie-duncan and designedbysophie.weebly.com
******
Collage Artist Trading Card Image
Blue Skies
paper
2013