Michael Manning

Michael Manning
Westwood, Massachusetts, USA

BIO

I started collecting magazines, cutting them up, and gluing them to my bedroom walls when I was 14. I am currently a 30-year-old black man. Growing up, I was one of the only kids of color in most of the schools I went to. I am adopted, and my adoptive family identifies as white. Identity is a daily chore for me, especially as an African American. Collage helps me to work through this with my hands. I can take the seemingly unrelated tiny pieces of what I see and try to connect them, tell a story, and make a masterpiece. I have fallen in love with the process and even I am excited to see the end result as it starts to take form. My work encapsulates the themes of consumerism, identity, earth, and music. These themes inspire me because they are always changing in cultures around the globe, which in turn is reflected through imagery found in many forms of printed media.

STATEMENT

This form of creation has allowed me to play with themes of my own identity in a metaphorical sense. Collage is real life Photoshop, and magazines are what social media used to be. My thesis is that my life is a collage and we all live in a collage. The medium is the message. Access to imagery is all around us, giving us suggestions, telling us what to buy, reminding us what our friends are doing, how to look and what to wear, and telling us what we don’t have or lack. But as the internet grows and social media becomes more popular, this access to images and information becomes overwhelming. Things start to feel less like “The Age of Information” and more like the “Age of Clutter.”. I collage on canvas to bring the concept what is traditionally considered a craft into a fine art space. I create with the intention to trick people into thinking it’s a painting from afar. That way I can reward their close scrutiny and literally have the viewer look at collage in a new way.

ARTIST CONTACT

[click to email]

thecollagedon.com

IMAGES