{"id":13222,"date":"2026-02-12T13:18:51","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T18:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/artistdirectory\/?p=13222"},"modified":"2026-02-12T13:18:51","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T18:18:51","slug":"kirk-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/artistdirectory\/kirk-read","title":{"rendered":"Kirk Read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
They Don\u2019t Let You Wait at the Jetway Anymore<\/em>
11″x9″; children\u2019s book images upon children\u2019s book images; 2025<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Kirk Read
Portland, Oregon, USA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

STATEMENT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many collagists, I am drawn to vintage papers, including industrial catalogues, youth science encyclopedias, children\u2019s 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\u2014they 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\u2019ve categorized materials into groupings like \u201cSchematics\u201d and \u201cChildhood Authority Figures.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BIO<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kirk Read is a writer, analog collage artist, and performance artist. He is the author of How I Learned to Snap<\/em> (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<\/em> awards in two categories. His collage has been featured on the cover of Cut Me Up<\/em>, Contemporary Collage Magazine<\/em>, in Kolaj Institute\u2019s artist trading cards, RFD<\/em>, and Khora<\/em>, 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\u2019s 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 \u201cNO\/STALGIA\u201d at Art at the Cave and \u201cWhat Remains Now\u201d at Alberta Street Gallery. His solo show \u201cYou Should Have Gotten Here Sooner\u201d 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 \u201cThis is the Thing\u201d and \u201cComputer Face\u201d earned him San Francisco Weekly<\/em>\u2019s designation as \u201cThe freak prince of San Francisco.\u201d 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<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ARTIST CONTACT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

EMAIL<\/a> | WEBSITE<\/a> | INSTAGRAM<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

IMAGES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Clear Sky Between Sunrise and Sunset<\/em>
12″x9″; telephone pole flyers on 1942 National Weather Review<\/em> maps; 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The Clocks Here Don\u2019t Use Batteries<\/em>
15″x12″; analog collage on wooden prototype board; 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Jubilee Station<\/em>
25″x20″; children\u2019s book fodder on found portrait of someone\u2019s grandparents in painted frame; 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Hospital corners are close enough to forever<\/em>
10.25″x8.25″; Cut Me Up<\/em>, issue 14 with architecture and children\u2019s book imagery; 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Portland, Oregon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":14604,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":true,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8],"tags":[217],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/artistdirectory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Kirk-Read-They-Dont-Let-you-Wait-at-the-Jetway-Anymore-web.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BNTD-3rg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/artistdirectory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/artistdirectory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/artistdirectory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/artistdirectory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/artistdirectory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13222"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/artistdirectory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14613,"href":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/artistdirectory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13222\/revisions\/14613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/artistdirectory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/artistdirectory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/artistdirectory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/artistdirectory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}