Kirk Read

Kirk Read
Portland, Oregon, USA

STATEMENT

Like many collagists, I am drawn to vintage papers, including industrial catalogues, youth science encyclopedias, children’s illustration, weathered telephone pole posters, and the personal ephemera of strangers. As an analog collage artist, I co-lead the Pacific Northwest Collage Collective with Kellette Elliott and participate in frequent in-person collage meetups in the community, online, and in my home studio. Writing, collage, and public health nursing emerge from the core of my being—they come from my Southern upbringing, which drives me to forge connections with other people and to inhabit realms of memory and contemporary life that defy expected social scripts. I source my materials through the Goodwill Bins and on the street, as well as the potluck anarchy of what people in my life share with me. I start with a period of fussy cutting using tiny scissors. I accumulate the imagery in plastic bins, followed by bursts of intuitive composition with Yes paste, often on watercolor paper. My daily practice contains a low-stakes creative theater where I experiment with form and composition, often using scraps and fragments. I maintain a community cutting library in my studio, where I’ve categorized materials into groupings like “Schematics” and “Childhood Authority Figures.” I do a large amount of my creative practice with other people. My writing and collage assist one another to make the imagination more transparent.

BIO

Kirk Read is a writer, analog collage artist, and performance artist. He is the author of How I Learned to Snap (Hill Street Press, Penguin/Putnam), a memoir which was an American Library Association Honor Book and Lambda Literary Award finalist. He makes analog collage and lives in Portland, Oregon, where he co-leads the Pacific Northwest Collage Collective with Kellette Elliott. He was shortlisted for the 2024 Contemporary Collage Magazine awards in two categories. His collage has been featured on the cover of Cut Me Up, Contemporary Collage Magazine, in Kolaj Institute’s artist trading cards, RFD, and Khora, a project of Corporeal Writing, where he has illustrated short stories using analog collage. His collage has been shown by the Kolaj Institute at LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans, Powell’s Books in Portland, the Independent Publishers Resource Center, RE-BOP! in Chicago, and the Radical Faerie Arts Festival, which he helped produce. He co-curated the collage exhibits “NO/STALGIA” at Art at the Cave and “What Remains Now” at Alberta Street Gallery. His solo show “You Should Have Gotten Here Sooner” was at Replicant in Portland. He was the founder and director of Army of Lovers, which produced over 300 arts events in San Francisco, including many collaborations with public health agencies. His theater shows “This is the Thing” and “Computer Face” earned him San Francisco Weekly’s designation as “The freak prince of San Francisco.” He has toured extensively as a writer and taught workshops all over the United States. He is close to finishing his novel Fannie Floyd and the Book of Life, which features a precocious Southern 14-year-old collage artist named Fannie Floyd who makes collage art with stolen mail. He works as a registered nurse and is married to the writer and longtime AIDS activist Ed Wolf.

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