11″x14″; vintage scarf, found and altered images, both antique and current images; 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
SYMPOSIUM AT KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS 2025
Symbols on a Cave Wall: Storytelling & Collage
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Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, 25-29 June 2025. Visit the website to learn more, see an overview of the program, and register to attend.
Storytelling is a fundamental part of the human experience. Every culture does it, sometimes in wildly different ways. From painted symbols on a cave wall to role playing video games, people are telling stories but also sharing vital information, conveying ethics and morality, or building a cosmology that explains the world in which we live. During the symposium at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, we will hear from Andrea Lewicki, Carolyn E. Oliver, Jordan Cerminara, Kirk Read, and Erica Trabold. Each practice is deeply involved with storytelling and collage.
Every collage tells a story; there is a story about every collage. “Some of us walk the adjoining lands of writing and collage. Some of us self-describe as writers who collage or collage artists who write. Some of us are terrified of words altogether,” wrote Portland, Oregon collagist and writer Kirk Read. “Writing, collage and public health nursing emerge from the core of my being–they come from a drive to forge connections with other people and to inhabit realms of memory and contemporary life that defy expected social scripts. My collage explores both abstraction and character-driven narrative, although this narrative is rarely linear or clear in a traditional sense. My collage is an extension of my writing practice, a laboratory for emerging ideas and character moves. I use materials that evoke nostalgia, then seek to subvert and contort the evocations.” Read will speak about how language and visual practices inform each other, “how they compete and argue and agree in our minds and hands.”
11″x14″; photo slicing, 1950s found images, old dictionary, dry wall tape; 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
“People’s hearts and minds are changed by storytelling,” wrote Carlsbad, California artist Carolyn E. Oliver. “My art is a reflection of my life’s journey—filled with stories, memories, and a love for the beauty and whimsy of everyday life. I draw inspiration from my world travels, personal transformations, and found materials collected along the way. Each piece is crafted with intention, layering textures, colors, and emotions to evoke a sense of wonder and individuality. My work is a celebration of storytelling through art.” Oliver will share her art and talk about how stories are infused into her collage works.
“I love making people laugh as much as I love meticulously cutting out disparate images and rearranging them to make a visual goof,” wrote Jordan Cerminara. The Beaverton, Oregon stand-up comic and visual artist has a unique practice of combining performance and collage. “I work all hand cut collage using a variety of source materials mostly comprised of vintage magazines and books with a focus on creating images that elicit laughter from the viewer. As a professional comedian, I use my designs as merch on the road.” Cerminara will speak about the role of humor in collage and how comedy and collage can “create a more authentic self on and off stage.” He wrote, “I’m a nerd for the whole process and I enjoy sharing moments and connecting with people–it is my whole life.”
collage with thread; 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
“Peculiarities, or things I love, in no specific order: crossword competitions, jigsaw puzzles, beans, sadcore music, washed rind cheeses, forest bathing, and Pacific Northwest geology. I dig poetry of the surreal and prose-y variety, and my art tends toward that direction. It’s often collage, which just means that I cut things up and mix them together until I get the level of weird I’m looking for. There’s a story somewhere in the layers of each piece that leaves my studio,” wrote Carnation, Washington artist and writer Andrea Lewicki. “Writing and making visual art are symbiotic processes for me. I move fluidly between them, letting one influence the other. In either medium, I am motivated by finding surprise, divergence, and catharsis.” Lewicki will speak about her artist practice and her experience using locative collage to tell stories.
9″x7.75″; collage, book and magazine pages; 2024
In Lynchburg, Virginia writer and artist Erica Trabold‘s series “Nourishing Flourishes,” florals and food playfully exaggerate the tension between homemaking and artmaking. She wrote, “While the viral tradwives of the internet serve their families only the best, I am interested in preparing food on the page…instead of in the kitchen. Art as resistance to ‘women’s work’ manifests in two mediums—essay and collage.” Trabold is the co-editor of the 2023 book, Lyric Essay as Resistance which won a Midwest Book Award. She will speak about her art and writing practices. “My essays are non-narrative, composed in fragments and images, relying heavily on repetition and juxtaposition, gaps and silences, to make meaning. My collages are analog, made with scissors and glue. Material springs from the pages of books, magazines, found objects, and a growing collection of ephemera,” wrote Trabold. “Unlike the digital files I create as a writer, when I collage, I make inherently physical objects. I see the tactile nature of these works is evidence of life and creative energy, an imperfect record of days.”
ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
Andrea Lewicki writes and makes art near Seattle. Lewicki has contributed art to literary magazines including Jelly Bucket, Mud Season Review, Cream City Review, and High Shelf Press. Her work appears in art publications such as Create! Magazine, Cut Me Up Magazine, Juniper Rag, and books released by Jen Tough Gallery. She is the founder of Special Agent Collage Collective, an international gathering in the scissors-and-glue-stick world. Though writing was her first creative love, long before she dared become an artist, she is a late-blooming writer. She has proudly lived almost half a century without cooking a turkey or wearing a sports jersey. Learn more at the Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory and www.andrealewicki.com.
Based in Southern California, Carolyn E. Oliver has worked throughout North America as an interior designer, including serving as a consultant to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on the design of their “The Home Shop.” For over two decades, Oliver has served as a Board Member of Art Center One Hundred, Art Center College of Design. She is also a former Trustee of Pasadena’s Pacific Asia Museum. She continues to serve as a longtime member of the Pasadena Art Alliance. Learn more at the Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory and www.carolyneoliverart.com.
Stand-up comic, collage artist, and co-creator of The Art Critique Comedy Show, Jordan Cerminara is a working entertainer at clubs and independent venues across North America. From one-liners to carefully crafted bits and full-blown stories, he brings a high-energy style to the stage with clever wordplay, a gamut of goofy voices, and the pipes of a karaoke legend. His debut comedy album, “Cuttin It Up”, released with Burn This Records hit #1 on the Amazon and Apple iTunes comedy charts. The artist lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Learn more at www.handcutcomedy.com.
Kirk Read is the author of the memoir How I Learned to Snap, which was an American Library Association Honor Book. He lives in Portland, Oregon and is the co-leader of the Pacific Northwest Collage Collective. He received a Bronze award from Contemporary Collage Magazine. His collage is in Kolaj Institute’s Collage Artist Trading Cards, Pack 10, and has appeared in Khora and RFD. He recently co-organized “NO/STALGIA”, a collage exhibit featuring over 80 artists from around the world. He was the founder and director of Army of Lovers, organizing over 300 arts events in San Francisco. He toured with Sister Spit and the Sex Workers Art Show. He is at work on a novel called Fannie Floyd and the Book of Life and works as a public health nurse with unhoused people detoxing from street drugs. Learn more at the Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory and on Instagram @anotherkirkread.
Erica Trabold is a collage artist, essayist, and author of Five Plots, winner of the inaugural Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize, and the chapbook Dots. With Zoe Bossiere, she co-edited the anthology The Lyric Essay as Resistance: Truth from the Margins. Trabold has exhibited in group shows sponsored by the National Collage Society, La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Hera Gallery, and other arts organizations, nationally and internationally, including “Amuse Bouche” at LeMieux Galleries during Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2024. She took part in Collage Artist Residency Scotland: Castles as Buildings, Metaphors, & Systems of Power in Spring 2024. The artist writes and teaches in central Virginia. Learn more at the Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory.
Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, 25-29 June 2025. Visit the website to learn more, see an overview of the program, and register to attend.