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Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival & symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, June 15-19, 2022.
REGISTER FOR KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS
EVENING EVENTS | DAILY COLLAGE CONGRESS | SYMPOSIUM
CONVERSATIONS | WORKSHOPS | SPECIAL EVENTS | EXHIBITIONS
Click the cover image to download a PDF version of the Program.
Program Book
This Kolaj Fest New Orleans Program Book is a document of all things related to Kolaj Fest. In these pages, you will find a schedule and descriptions of sessions, bios and website information for artists and presenters, descriptions of evening events and special workshops and some helpful information about getting around and being in New Orleans. A printed version is included in one's Welcome Packet.
Program Overview
EVENING EVENTS
WEDNESDAY EVENING
Welcome Reception
International House explains the idea behind its beautiful lobby bar. "Loa are divine spirits in the Vodou faith tradition, but it is spirit of space and spirits in the glass that make loa the destination watering hole for New Orleans’ more creative artists, entrepreneurs and hotel guests alike." Kolaj Fest New Orleans will host a reception on Wednesday, June 15th, 5-7PM. Attendees will be able to check into Kolaj Fest and meet the organizers and other folks attending Kolaj Fest.
WEDNESDAY EVENING
The Mystic Krewe of Scissors & Glue Collage Night
Wednesday, June 15, 2022, 7PM-9PM. The Domino. The Mystic Krewe of Scissors & Glue provides a community for collage artists in New Orleans to connect with each other, from people who have never collaged in their life until they attend a monthly meet-up to artists who have been working with collage for years, to activate spaces around the city with collage, to collaborate on projects, and to give back to the city of New Orleans. The Krewe was founded in July 2018 when Christopher Kurts and Hope Amico met at Kolaj Fest New Orleans.
THURSDAY
FILM SCREENING
Collage in Motion
June 16th, 2022, 7PM
at The Broad Theater, 636 North Broad Street
As part of Kolaj Fest New Orleans, Laurie O'Brien will debut the "Collage In Motion Film Screening", a 90-minute program that introduces the world of contemporary collage in motion. The program celebrates a range of moving image collage approaches from the pioneers of experimental collage films to extremely short motion work of just a few seconds viewed as looped GIFs.
The screening will highlight artists who have been making collage films for decades, such as Lewis Klahr, who uses comic books as material, and Janie Geiser’s films, with her mysterious narratives and beautiful textures. Many other magnificent experimental collage film pioneers will be screened whose work ranges from abstract to narrative, music videos and conceptual work. Collage motion GIFs that have blossomed in the age of social media are also featured with the delightful and extremely short work of New Orleans-based Erik Winkowski and Italian Giuseppe Ragazzini. The evolution of collage motion work that is faster and shorter is commentary on our shrinking attention spans. The program includes hand-made collage techniques as well as digital collage films.
Among the short films and excerpts being shown are works by Janie Geiser, Lewis Klahr, Erik Winkowski, Giuseppe Ragazzini, Jodie Mack, Lisa Barcy, Miwa Matreyek, Laurie O’Brien, Osbert Parker, Rob Carter, Winston Hacking, Jeremy Rourke, Lauren Flinner, Lei Lei, and more!
Tickets are $10
(free for Kolaj Fest New Orleans registrants)
FRIDAY
Politics In Collage Opening Reception
7PM to 9PM at The Domino. This event will be an opening reception and book launch for the exhibition, Politics In Collage. Although the main thread running through this exhibition is “political” in its broadest definition, the artists each chose specific issues to explore through the medium of collage. There are examinations of various forms of racism, ableism, sexism, and xenophobia; the consequences of colonization and capitalism; the effects of contemporary media; and the eco-grief or anxiety associated with climate change. By using collage, a form composed of juxtaposing a variety of disparate elements together, the artists are able to tell nuanced stories about their highly complex topics, inviting the viewers to regard a potentially overwrought issue from a fresh angle. MORE
SATURDAY
Show & Tell
Got a story to tell or a collage poem to read or show? This event is for you. Christopher Kurts will share Collage Poetry from the recent Kolaj Institute residency (and forthcoming journal). Nancy Bernardo will read from The Awakening, an 1899 novel by Kate Chopin that will be the subject of an upcoming Collage as Illustration Residency. Kevin Sampsell will read from his forthcoming book, I Made an Accident. Caleb Hammond will share his collage sound project "Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One." Derek Owens & Caroline Golden will share a story from their book, The Villagers. And we will open the mic to Kolaj Fest New Orleans attendees who have a story to share or collage to show.
DAILY COLLAGE CONGRESS
At each Daily Collage Congress, we will review the day’s agenda. Speakers will share ideas about the state of collage. And we will hear updates about special projects taking place during the festival.
THURSDAY
Welcome to Kolaj Fest New Orleans
We will officially open Kolaj Fest New Orleans on Thursday's Daily Collage Congress and hear from a number of artists about projects and exhibitions taking place during the festival. Artists will be invited to contribute to the Great Collage Swap taking place on Sunday. Ann E. Lawton will speak about a Collaborative Zine she is making with festival attendees. Julia Wasilewski and Jaime Johnson will introduce the workshop they are leading at Tulane University later in the day. Thursday's Congress is the primary orientation to Kolaj Fest New Orleans.
Image by Caleb Hammond
FRIDAY
Collage Conversation
So much to talk about. At the Daily Collage Congress, we will hear about projects being discussed during the day in the International House Atrium: Mia van Leeuwen will introduce her 2023 project where artists are making work that helps people visualize death, dying, and grief. Clive Knights will speak about a project being done with Todd Bartel that explores the horizon as a conceptual space. Caleb Hammond will explain how you can be part of an interactive, continually evolving, live sound-collage that will take place throughout the day.
SATURDAY
Getting to Work
How does collage work in the world? At this day's Daily Collage Congress, we will review the events of the day; the highlights of which are a Collage Art & Book Market, gallery visits in the Bywater, and Collage Making at The Domino. Ann E. Lawton will speak about how she uses collage to facilitate dialogue and challenge violence-related issues on a college campus. She is an artist, art therapist, and art educator from River Falls, Wisconsin who finds "that collage is the ultimate art medium." She writes, "One can feel empowered by putting together a visual riddle by sifting and sorting through paper ephemera and layers. For these reasons, among others, I use collage as the primary media in the work that I facilitate as a violence prevention specialist on a college campus." Lawton's presentation asks us how we put collage to work in the world.
SUNDAY
Great Collage Swap
& Goodbyes
On Sunday, we will gather one final time to say our goodbyes and to conduct The Great Collage Swap. To participate, bring a collage to exchange to the Info Table before 10AM Sunday. In return, you will be given a number. All of the collages will be displayed. During the program, a collage will be selected and matched with a number and the holder of that number will receive the collage. As the collages are matched, each artist has a chance to share their story.
SYMPOSIUM
KOLAJ FEST SYMPOSIUM
A Colorful Maximalist Life:
Tony Fitzpatrick
with Lisa Barcy & Paloma Trecka
Actor, writer, and artist Tony Fitzpatrick is world-renowned for colorful, maximalist collage. "His imagery is inspired by street life in Chicago, childhood encounters with Catholic icons, superheroes, industrialization and contemporary politics," wrote Division Galleries. Before becoming a full time artist, Fitzpatrick worked as a radio host, bartender, boxer, construction worker, and film and stage actor. A bad car accident led him to commit to being a full-time artist. On a trip to New York, a chance meeting with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat introduced him to the New York art scene. His artwork can be found in a number of museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC. Fitzpatrick's unique look can also be found on album covers for Lou Reed, Steve Earle and The Neville Brothers who introduced him to New Orleans where he fell in love with the city.
In 2015, he opened The Dime, an exhibition space in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood that shows artists working across multiple mediums and genres. From October 2021 to January 2022, Cleve Carney Museum of Art presented the exhibition, "Tony Fitzpatrick: Jesus of Western Avenue" which the collage artist stated would be his final museum show. About the decision, he told WTTW News, "I think it’s time for people who look like me to get out of the way and create some institutional wall-space for people who’ve not had a light shined on them. I’ve gotten mine...I think when you get to the top of the hill you hold a hand and pull the next person up."
At Kolaj Fest New Orleans, Fitzpatrick will speak about his life, career as an artist, and his approach to art community.
He will be joined by Chicago-based artists and educators Lisa Barcy and Paloma Trecka who will present collaborative short film that combines performance, collage art and animation and speak about their process, poetic narratives, and approach to collage.
KOLAJ FEST MUSEUM TOUR
Uncollage the Ogden Museum
Uncollage is the idea that artists have, for a very long time, used collage operations to make art. Such practices often include a masking process to make the collage elements unseen. In the pages of Kolaj Magazine and at Kolaj LIVE events, Todd Bartel has been unpacking and exploring the idea of Uncollage and the artists who use this practice. Using the current exhibitions of the Ogden Museum, Bartel will take us on a tour that focuses on those artists whose respective practices “are dependent upon collecting images and employing collage processes that are not always visibly evident in the work. Artists such as these, and many more, prompt us to expand the definition of collage and divide the term to attribute some of its wider applications.” Looking at art in this way will change how you see art and uncover the deep impact collage has had throughout art history.
SYMPOSIUM
The Villagers: Derek Owens & Caroline Golden
During the early days of the pandemic, Derek Owens chanced upon several of Caroline Golden's surreal collage portraits, a series she'd titled "The Villagers." Owens asked Golden if he could write a fable to go along with one of the images; she agreed and, fortunately, was pleased with the narrative. Over several months a book-length work of thirty-seven collage portraits, each with its accompanying fable, was created. In 2022, Animal Heart Press released the book, The Villagers. This presentation will explore Golden's process for making her hand cut collages, as well as Owens's approach to writing a fictional counterpart for each image. The two will also discuss how this venture--which somewhat resembled, but wasn't exactly ekphrasis--gave them new insights into the importance of chance, chemistry, and trust when engaging in this rather unique approach to collaboration.
KOLAJ FEST SYMPOSIUM
Sense of Place: Collaging the World
We Live In
How do collage artists help us visualize the world in which we live? Kolaj Institute is engaged in a number of projects through which collage artists explore a sense of place and communicate what they find in artwork. At Kolaj Fest New Orleans, Ric Kasini Kadour will speak briefly about each of these projects. He will be joined by Jessica O’Lear and Piotr Wojcik, each of whom centers their art practice on a sense of place. Philadelphia-born, Ottawa-based Jessica O’Lear creates digital collage that reimagines city spaces. Lexington, Kentucky-based scholar and artist Piotr Wojcik uses collage and zine-making in his research practice to engage with maps, archives, and memory as they relate to thoroughbred horseracing, social history, and present-day struggles over the landscape. Kadour will speak about past and upcoming projects from Kolaj Institute.
KOLAJ FEST SYMPOSIUM
Collage in Practice
How are collage artists developing, maintaining, and evolving their artist practice? We will explore this question through the work and experiences of three artists: Kerith Lisi, Marie-Pier Lopes, and Shona Chornenki.
Toronto-based Shona Chornenki creates "intricate, complex, and layered works using vintage images, natural and found objects, and thrift store finds as collaged narratives that reflect today’s changing world." Her "Amerika" series is informed by the experience of finding shot-gun shells on a beach near a residency center she was staying at. The collaged shells, presented vintage printers' trays, form intimate narratives about society. Chornenki will speak about how "the act of creating is subversive by its very nature."
Kerith Lisi's collage making is in deep conversation with the materials she uses. "I am drawn to working with materials that show evidence of having a history, oftentimes discarded, which can then be used to create something new and unexpected. Whether it is old books, ephemera, or found paper, the fact that the materials are salvaged allows for a certain freedom in creating a new composition." For the past three years, Lisi has been working primarily with discarded paperback and hardcover books and the fact that the materials are salvaged allows for a certain freedom in creating a new composition. Her work has found a home in the commercial art world at SLATE Contemporary Gallery in Oakland that represents her collage to private collectors and interior designers. Lisi will speak about her experience finding a gallery, exhibiting, and taking on commissions.
Montreal-based Marie-Pier Lopes is a professional visual artist and dancer whose "practice revolves around painting and collage," she writes, "two techniques that feed off each other in an engaged research on the perception and consumption of the female body. I am particularly interested in how the female body and her sexuality is represented in present-day Western societies. So, I collect different cut-outs from magazines, books or posters in order to divert them and, thus, create a new more ambiguous narrative specific to collage. My subject is intrinsically linked to my past in modeling and as a performing artist." Lopes will speak about how collage has become "an essential part of my creative process" and present her series, "Tiny Violence."
KOLAJ FEST SYMPOSIUM
Difficult Subjects
How are artists the subjects of their own work? San Francisco artist Julie Blankenship will discuss artists using collage to explore difficult subjects during challenging times—while reflecting on their interior lives, bodies, relationships, struggles for autonomy and recognition, and other challenges. Based on conversations, research and interviews, she will present work from artists including Inez Storer, TT Takemoto, Jean Connor, Lynn Hershman Leeson and Janet Jones, who discuss wide ranging issues including history, illness, gender, queer identity, race, autobiography, and nature in their work.
Julie Blankenship writes about how she works through difficult subjects in her own work: "Many of my friends and family died during the AIDS pandemic. During this terrible time, all of our assumptions about our identities and the trajectory of our lives were challenged. In my work, instead of taking photographs, I began to respond by using found, vintage portraits, often damaged, identities lost. Originally, the photographs encouraged a feeling of connection to distant people, places and times. I continue to use found photos today, interrupting their (now unknown) narratives—deconstructing and recycling them into works whose beauty arises out of processes that nearly destroy them. Obsessed with their presence as objects, I work directly on the surfaces of cabinet cards and cartes de visite, many of which are over 150 years old. My approach is intuitive and process-oriented, as I alter the photographs by hand through time-intensive stages, repeatedly painting, soaking, folding, cutting, and layering the images with ink, dust and glue. The resulting works have a physicality and presence that the original portraits lacked-they record the journey of the photographs themselves and what they've endured, revealing both humanity and otherworldliness as the images of the individuals morph, taking on new forms and nuanced, invented identities. Inspired by archives, my work explores beauty, history, the ephemeral nature of objects, and identity as always in flux. It alludes to metamorphoses, dark histories and gothic struggles, in the context of today's political and ecological upheaval."
KOLAJ FEST SYMPOSIUM
HAIRitage: A Journey Through New Works
Erin Smith Glenn:
Black Hair Culture, Art & Craft
Erin Smith Glenn grew up around a hair salon and that experience informs her research and artmaking today. "Throughout my life, I’ve studied the styles that Black people have embraced until one day when I decided to consciously research the roots of the great innovations in Black Hair Culture," she writes. "During this process, various magazines, books, media and especially personal and historical accounts have fed my understanding of the hairstyles and the purposes behind why we wear them. The dynamics of the works seek to explore the concepts of each piece and therefore, promote the awareness of Black Hair Culture on all accounts: social, political, and historical. Aesthetics and beauty was never the only intention when traditional African styles were innovated. The styles being used communicate status, healthy relationships, transitions from childhood into adulthood and so much more."
Black Hair Culture is expressed in the collage work of Sonya Clark, Lorna Simpson, Ellen Gallagher and other contemporary artists and sometimes references the work of Merritt Oppenheim, a German-born Swiss Surrealist and feminist. Smith Glenn draws a connection between Black Hair Culture and African adornment culture. "In African culture, adornment is extreme. It involves a lot of materials," she said. This insight led to a breakthrough in Smith Glenn's art practice in which the lines between fine art and craft are often blurred. "Last year, I started to think, I'm bored with doing things the same way. The painting is good. The crochet is good. But it just wasn't enough for me anymore. I wanted to be innovative in a way that suited me and I didn't want to just be like innovative for the sake of being innovative. I wanted it to be something that spoke to others." Smith Glenn began to adorn the figures in her paintings, often in ways that extended the artwork off the canvas. In one work, the crocheted neck ring of one figure breaks through the canvas and forms a word on the wall next to it.
"Each work shares how I strive to recognize, respect and uphold the significance of even the most seemingly insignificant parts of culture through the power of HAIRitage. Through various media including painting, drawing, mixed media, and even actual application of hair at times, I have and continue to find avenues in which to explore all of the ways in which hair and other hair products can finally be celebrated and included in a class all by themselves." During this session, Smith Glenn will speak about her research into Black Hair Culture, the artists who make work around this theme, and her own approach to the subject.
SYMPOSIUM
COVID Collage
What Was Made During the Pandemic and How Will It Be Seen in the Future? The COVID-19 Pandemic continues to impact how collagists make and share artwork. For some artists, the pandemic interrupted their practice, preventing them from working in their studios or presenting work in exhibition. For others, lockdowns were an opportunity to rethink how they make and share artwork or to tackle a larger, more ambitious project. In this session, we will hear from two artists about how the pandemic impacted their art practice. After their presentations, they will invite others to share how they responded to the pandemic and facilitate a discussion about how this artwork may be meaningful in the near and long term.
Born in Biddeford, Maine and now based in Magdalena, New Mexico, Estelle Roberge painted abstract landscapes inspired by the wilderness of the American Southwest. The pandemic altered her painting practice and collage became a way of coping. "It became difficult to focus on painting and I experienced various states of panic. I had an empty text block in my studio and began to make collage entries, a visual diary that became an essential part of my artistic practice. As I became more deeply involved in the collage process, a calming element emerged and I began to overcome that underlying sense of panic. I found myself entering states of quietude and tranquility, even though everything around had seemed to fall to pieces: jobs, schools, hospital care and most of all the enormous loss of life. Images in the collages began to reflect my experiences of isolation, of memory and melancholy, of hope, and of nature." Her book, Book of Covid: Unbound, documents how she "found balance and well-being, during a very insecure time."
Cathy Greenhalgh is a film-maker, lecturer, media anthropologist and writer based in London, United Kingdom. She writes, "During the pandemic, collage has become my modus operandi and modus vivendi, more than my normal mode of film-making and photography. This has been because of access and movement restrictions from my London base and as a way of seeing how making processes and recycling materials would question my normal practices. What began as creative therapy developed into a visual anthropology chronicle, an ‘ars combinatoria’ diary of the year 2020 to 2022. Over three hundred and fifty collages, so far, cover aspects of communication, culture, economy, environment, health, people, politics, protest, and spirit, and personal territory. They incorporate lockdown activities, uprisings and trauma, grief and conspiracies, resilience and infection." Greenhalgh will present selections from her project, "Covid Collage Chronicles," as an auto-ethnography of the time.
SYMPOSIUM
Sharing Ideas:
Collage at Institutions
What role can artists play in helping those engaged in academic research share their ideas with the larger community? In 2020, as the world went into lockdown, Khaleelah I. L. Harris, who would otherwise be preoccupied with her Master’s Degree work at Yale University’s Divinity School, found herself with the time to consider these questions. She began an in-depth investigation of African-American women’s history. “I started to notice how much was hidden or not recorded in the first place and how many holes there were. I was able to put people’s stories together...I realized that it was similar to what you do when you create a collage. In terms of portraits and photographs, there weren’t that many. For some of the women that I was researching, there was only one picture of them,” she recalled. “I would start to make collages that were the visual representation of my own interventions.” This experience was the inspiration for the exhibition, “Allegories, Renditions, and A Small Nation of Women,” which Harris co-curated with Baltimore-based independent curator and writer Teri Henderson in 2021. The exhibition “is an example of a group of Black scholars and art-centered people coming together from across the country to make this exhibition happen. We’re elevating the voices of people in the exhibition,” said Henderson.
Collage is well suited to help us make sense of the world. Collage artists can bring together “educational and cultural institutions for the creation of thoughtful and meaningful exhibitions,” writes Harris. In this session, Khaleelah Harris will share her experience of curating “A Small Nation of Women’’ and speak about how collage can inform academic research and how collage artists may partner with institutions to reach a larger audience.
SYMPOSIUM
The Upcycle is in the Mail: Lindsay Stewart
Based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Lindsay Stewart is an artist, art collector and visual merchandiser specializing in mixed media and mail/postal art. For over two decades, she has been an avid mailer and collector of mail art. In 2000, at age sixteen, she created The Mail Club, a modest collection of high school friends of friends who would receive a typewritten list of member's addresses and a personal questionnaire in the mail. At its peak, the club had nearly one hundred members. In 2010, Stewart created Varity Concert, an upcycled and reimagined stationery line that sells one of a kind collaged greeting cards, notebooks, stickers, mix-and-match stationery sets and craft packs geared towards collagers, journalers and other paper artists. During this presentation, Stewart will discuss the intersection of collage and mail art, focusing on collaboration across the world. She’ll share selections from her extensive and unique mail art collection in a show and tell manner with an emphasis on some of the most weird and wonderful things you can send through the mail.
SYMPOSIUM
Paper Pattern Doodling: Deborah Eater
Using snips of paper as if they were brushstrokes, Deborah Eater considers herself on a mission to broaden the perception of collage. A few years ago, when she discovered pattern doodling with pen and ink, the Pennsylvania artist set about trying to do something similar with collage. She came up with a number of different design templates which, like pattern doodles in ink, can be worked in easy-to-follow steps. The finished patterns can appear quite intricate, but are not nearly as complicated as they look. Each pattern can be varied in interesting ways, combined with other patterns, or inserted in a collage piece worked mainly in some other style. During this session, Eater will share her art practice and show her innovative pattern doodling.
SYMPOSIUM
Uncollage in Action
Can an airbrush painter be a collage artist? From Cincinnati, Ohio, Henry Burdsall makes dynamic, colorful, and playful compositions thick with juxtaposed elements. He “wants the work to reflect the way everyone is bombarded with information everyday by using an overload of subject matter that doesn’t entirely tie together. Therefore, this creates new connections to unfamiliar subject matter. The idea shatters expectations by giving something which is once both recognizable, in terms of its individual elements, and wildly inexplicable, in terms of what a painting can be, when all those disparate elements come together in a single composition.” The final works are paintings that resemble collage. The artist writes, “I find myself having to defend how my work is informed and structured in a manner that is directly related to collage.” During this session, Todd Bartel will introduce Burdsall as a prime example of uncollage and Burdsall will demonstrate his technique.
COLLAGE CONVERSATIONS
COLLAGE CONVERSATIONS
Unconnected Yet
Rabindranath Tagore told Albert Einstein in 1930, "We individuals approach truth through our own mistakes and blunders, through our accumulated experience, through our illumined consciousness." Imagine the gap: things to be connected, something to be spanned, a subject to better understand, an unexperienced phenomenon, an unnamed or unseen thing, or maybe even something unexplainable. Albert Einstein once wrote, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” Art and science often begin with accidents, mistakes, questions, and musings. What would you connect if you could? Unconnected Yet is an exhibition about the junction between things, a call for art that explores any combination of art and science. "Unconnected Yet" bridges the arts and science communities of Boston and Kolkata bringing art from near and far to 5 galleries at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata, India. Accepted works from outside India travel to the venue through large format digital printing, and all accepted works will be included in the accompanying catalog. In this session, curator Todd Bartel will present the call for art and discuss the plans for this new global initiative. During this session, Bartel will introduce the project and speak to those interested in getting involved.
COLLAGE CONVERSATIONS
An Academic Journal of Collage?
How can Kolaj Institute support those in the tenure pipeline and academic research of collage? What might a peer-review process look like? Is there interest in the community for such an effort? Can an academic journal of collage foster deeper research into the history of collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a 21st century art movement? During this session, Ric Kasini Kadour will facilitate a conversation about this subject with those interested in the idea.
COLLAGE CONVERSATIONS
How To Raise A Ghost
Based in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, Mia van Leeuwen's practice uses performance collage to explore movement and ideas. Queering, juxtaposing, unsettling, disturbing, re-mixing, winking, collaborating, baring process, and making strange are some of the actions that inform the devising of her various projects. She writes, "I am a collagist for the stage. I still have faith in fragments and continue to collect and rearrange them. I value juxtaposition. I am an editor. I assemble. I make new of what has been smashed. I think this practice is still relevant... How might the world be organized differently?"
Her current project "How to Raise a Ghost" is a research-creation mode of inquiry into the vast subject of death. This excavation is rooted in the ancient practice of memento mori (Latin for "remember you must die") and reimagined through an art-now praxis. She writes, "Death studies is a burgeoning area of scholarly and artistic inquiry emerging through the fields of queer death studies, death themed art residencies, symposia and other online events dedicated to death. Various death positive and death awareness raising individuals, movements and centers can be found throughout the world, marked by a surge of communities who demystify the process through social, artistic, and educational gatherings." How to Raise a Ghost asks: Can the Covid-19 pandemic become a turning point for our cultural approach to death, dying, and grief? What perspectives can the artistic imagination offer the inevitability that awaits us all?"
During this Conversation Session, van Leeuwen will introduce the next phase of her research "How to Raise a Ghost: A Handbook for the Living" and speak about how artists can participate.
COLLAGE CONVERSATIONS
What's Next for Kolaj
Want to know more about getting involved with Kolaj Institute? Perhaps you are curious about joining a residency or taking a workshop? Maybe you want to contribute to or be featured in Kolaj Magazine? This session is for you. Editor Ric Kasini Kadour and Kolaj Institute Coordinator Christopher Kurts will lead an information session about upcoming programs and artist opportunities.
COLLAGE MAKING
Collage making will take place 10AM to 5PM on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of Kolaj Fest New Orleans.
In addition to free time to make collage, the space will host artists leading demonstrations and workshops.
The space has scissors, X-acto knives, glue, and a collection of papers and materials.
SPECIAL WORKSHOP
Collage Motion Workshop
Sunday, June 19, 2022, 1-4PM. Participants in this workshop will learn to create a short animation working with their own collage art material or objects. Working with both old and new technologies, participants will learn techniques of stop-motion using an app on their own smartphone and will have the option of creating a figurative collage puppet or assemblages using paper as objects. This screening, demo and workshop will be taught by Laurie O’Brien. Sign-up is required and participants should bring their own smartphone or tablet and download the free app “Stop Motion Studio” from the App Store or Google Play before attending the workshop.
Note: Space is limited. RSVP required. To sign-up, send an email or speak to someone at the Kolaj Fest New Orleans Information Desk. First come, first serve and we will create a waiting list if all the spaces are filled.
Note: Space is limited. RSVP required. The material cost of this workshop is $15 for registered participants of Kolaj Fest New Orleans or $25 for the general public. To sign-up, send an email or speak to someone at the Kolaj Fest New Orleans Information Desk. First come, first serve and we will create a waiting list if all the spaces are filled.
SPECIAL WORKSHOP
Encaustic Collage Workshop
Thursday, June 16, 2022, 3-5PM. Continuing a lifelong interest in collage, artist and educator Beth Guipe Hall has been experimenting with encaustic since 2006 to create 2D art in three dimensions. Participants in this workshop will learn how to use encaustic medium (encaustic without pigment) as an adhesive and a transfer medium. After sharing the history of encaustic, Beth Guipe Hall will demonstrate how to apply the medium, embed paper into the wax surface, fuse the surface with each application of medium, and three different transfer techniques. Working on 12x12 Masonite panels, participants will make an encaustic collage they can take home with them.
SPECIAL WORKSHOP
Externalizing the Internal: Collage & Theatre
Thursday, June 16, 2022, 1:30-4:30PM. Collage and theatre have a long history of informing each other. In a special, three-hour workshop taking place at Tulane University as part of Kolaj Fest New Orleans, Julia Wasilewski and Jaime Johnson from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada will share how they use collage in their theatre practice and lead participants in a process of self-reflection and mask making. Note: RSVP required, space is limited. MORE
COLLAGE MAKING
Beauty, Nature, Decay, & Fear
The artwork of Louisiana-based art educator Deanna Larmeu "is a reminder of the support we provide to one another in desperate times and brings attention to those who are troubled when things seem peaceful. Pieces explore balances such as the beauty of nature and the love we have for one another juxtaposed with the horrors of death, decay, and fear." Larmeu grew up fishing or crabbing on Bayou Bienvenu and during the COVID-19 pandemic helped spread joy in the Greater New Orleans community despite the cancellation of Mardi Gras by creating pieces for the Krewe of House Floats. During this collage making session, Larmeu will share her approach to collage and offer her insights on creating a successful collage.
COLLAGE MAKING AT KOLAJ FEST
The 7th Triangular Number & A Round Robin
Canadian-born, Seattle-based Cheryl Chudyk works in a variety of media with a diverse number of subjects. "I tackled everything from flora and fauna to mammalian reproduction with scissors and vinyl. I have always been heavily influenced by bold, punchy colours and retro memorabilia." She will host a collaborative workshop where she will guide participants in the making of seven collages in handmade booklets using a Round Robin system. "I love using this technique to see which numbers are the most and least enjoyable to work with, which varies from person to person. It also opens up the possibilities to explore minimalism with one and two element collages."
COLLAGE MAKING AT KOLAJ FEST
Brown Papier Bag Collage
Anastasia "Stacy" Kirages sources imagery and content from vintage cookbooks, magazines, found photography, discarded textbooks, and beauty catalogs; nothing is off limits. She is a Houston-based collage artist, zinester, and community organizer for Zine Fest Houston. From Missouri City, Texas, Chasity Porter is "inspired by everyday life experiences, dreams, and memories, and it is the darkness that makes the most impression." She asks, "What makes people and objects unique, inspired, haunted? I am attracted to the absurd and how absurdity has become a part of everyday society; how it has affected us–how it has affected me–and what effect will it have on our futures?" For World Collage Day 2021, the duo started the Brown Papier Bag Collage Project. "We stuffed ordinary brown paper bags with collage goodies, educational information, instructions, and a glue stick, then placed them at several small businesses around town. The public were instructed to find these bags, create their own Brown Papier Bag Collage, then post their works on Instagram with the hashtags #bpbcollage and #worldcollageday. For World Collage Day 2022 they partnered with The Orange Show, a visionary artspace unique to Houston, where they set up a Brown Papier Bag collage making station, something they will recreate during this session at Kolaj Fest New Orleans.
SPECIAL EVENTS & PROJECTS
In addition to a robust program of presentations, a number of special activities will take place at Kolaj Fest New Orleans.
Collage by Kevin Comarda
AT KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS
Collage Art & Book Market
Saturday, June 18, 2022, 1 to 5PM
Cafe Istanbul in the New Orleans Healing Center
2372 St. Claude Ave, New Orleans, LA 70117 [map]
Part of Kolaj Fest New Orleans, the Collage Art & Book Market is an opportunity for the general public to meet artists and publishers and to take in the rich and diverse cultural production of the international collage community. The public will be invited to peruse vendor displays or attend a talk or demonstration. The event is free and open to the public.
HOW TO EXHIBIT
If you are an artist or book publisher, we invite you to sign-up for an exhibition space at the Collage Art & Book Market. The cost is included (free) to those registered for Kolaj Fest New Orleans, $30 for others. Vendors will be assigned a 30-inch table or may bring their own display. Vendors staff their own tables and manage all sales independently. To sign-up, complete a submission HERE.
Submissions are reviewed on an ongoing basis. Space is limited. Deadline to submit is June 6th (unless the market is full before then).
COLLAGE PROJECT
Collaborative Kolaj Fest Zine
Ann E. Lawton is an artist, art therapist, and art educator from River Falls, Wisconsin. Throughout Kolaj Fest New Orleans, she will be guiding and facilitating a Kolaj Fest Zine centered around the theme of community care. Lawton will introduce the project during Thursday's Daily Collage Congress and lead a collage making session on Saturday at The Domino for those interested in contributing. Lawton writes, "To collage is to reflect on relationships and the process of creating meaning and change: sometimes overwhelming and isolating, and amidst the environments and subject matter, layers and mixture of elements, the achy givens of the human condition are not hidden, but rather, overlooked. Collage and community-based directives can alleviate discomfort, promote opportunities for verbal discussion, provide opportunities to evaluate community needs, and practice self-awareness and empathy through social-emotional learning."
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Bywater Gallery Tour
Karen Louise Crain is a New Orleans-based contemporary art expert who specializes in connecting local artists with collectors through personally guided tours of the city’s best galleries and artists’ studios. Join her for a walking tour of galleries in The Bywater Neighborhood, including collage on view at Staple Goods, SHED Gallery, Aquarium Gallery, and more.
COLLAGE SOUND PROJECT
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One
A project by New York City-based Caleb Hammond, "Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One" is an interactive, continually evolving, live sound-collage made impromptu using contributions from those who pass by it. Hammond explains, "I ask visitors to the installation to name a song that evokes a strong memory for them. Then, they may choose to either simply tell me the name of the song, sing a bit of it into a microbe-protected microphone, or record themselves singing the song, humming the tune or reciting the lyrics on their phone and send it to me. Participants may additionally record themselves reading their memory and send it to me. I build a live mix, layering in these various versions of memory songs, along with samples of the originals. I use various digital and analog effects, re-mixing and re-looping fragments of the stories and songs back into the work. Surprising juxtapositions occur through the mix of different voices with different singing proficiencies, and the mix of amateurish and professional interpretations creates a very human and affecting mosaic of sound." If you are musically inclined and want to participate, send Caleb an email and ask him about getting involved.
EXHIBITIONS
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Politics in Collage
at The Domino in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. 14 June-20 July 2022. Opening Reception: 17 June 2022, 7-9PM. 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
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Birdsongs
Joseph Havel at Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA through 16 July 2022. The bronze sculptures and wall assemblages exhibited in “Birdsongs” are a collaboration between renowned sculptor Joseph Havel and his African grey parrot Hannah. Like most Americans during lockdown, Joseph Havel turned to online shopping to fulfill basic needs. With the abundance of cardboard boxes Hannah reverted to her natural instincts and began chewing on the boxes. Havel stacked the boxes and allowed Hannah to revisit the boxes to make sure she was happy with her creations. Once both artists are satisfied with the box tower creations, Havel casts the creations in bronze. The demand for cardboard boxes contributes to deforestation and habitat loss of species like the African grey parrot. The precarious appearance of the structures is a nod to the chaos of the past two years and the demise of our planet’s ecosystems. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
SEEP
Melissa Pokorny at SHED Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 11-30 June 2022. “SEEP” is a solo experience and exhibition by Melissa Pokorny, who creates sculptural works that question ways of knowing the world and illuminate the invisible, intangible, and knotty attachments between temporal, geographical, and material things. The sense of place also informs the artist’s work. Cultural and natural histories connected to landscapes are typically unseen, or overlooked–rendered invisible through time, scale, willful erasure, or simply by becoming a too-familiar part of the background. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Krewe on View
Mystic Krewe of Scissors & Glue at Aquarium Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 11 June-3 July 2022. The Mystic Krewe of Scissors & Glue provides a community for collage artists in New Orleans to connect with each other, from people who have never collaged in their life until they attend a monthly meet-up to artists who have been working with collage for years, to activate spaces around the city with collage, to collaborate on projects, and to give back to the city of New Orleans. Select members of the Krewe will be showcasing individual works from the past few years. Featured artists include Christopher Kurts, Michael Pajón, Ella Campbell, Kevin Comarda, and Savanna Meekins. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
100 Views on Waking and Shortly Before
Sadie Sheldon at Staple Goods in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 11 June-3 July 2022. “100 Views on Waking and Shortly Before” features Arabica Scroll: a 300-foot scroll Sadie Sheldon has been working on since the early pandemic lockdown of 2020. Painted and sewn on recycled coffee bags, the images undulate between mundane moments, active imaginations and recollected dreams. All are collaged and sewn together with layers of plastic trash accumulated throughout the pandemic. Much like the still frames of a film reel, the images are set into a sequence that tells their story in a chronological progression, weaving between the realities of sleep and awakeness. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
What a Wonderful World
Luis Cruz Azaceta at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA through 24 July 2022. The exhibition features over 50 works from 1975 to 2021 that trace the formal and conceptual development of Cuban-American visual artist Luis Cruz Azaceta. After emigrating to the US in 1960, Azaceta found his voice and identity through art. In the 1970s, Azaceta began using the self-portrait as a way to both explore his own identity and to understand the pain of others. By placing himself as a victim in the compositions, he expressed both solidarity and empathy–a process that he has carried throughout his career. His work preceded and informed the Neo-Expressionist movement of the 1980s. Since moving to New Orleans in 1992, his work has moved towards abstraction, exploring the human condition through metaphorical representations of current events. MORE
Assemblage by Marcy Lally
at LeMieux Galleries. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Collage in
The Crescent City
Like any vibrant, contemporary art scene, New Orleans is full of remarkable galleries showing collage. For 2022, we are planning dynamic exhibitions and gallery tours.
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