5″x5″; magazine clippings on card stock. Courtesy of the artist.
FROM KOLAJ 33
Celia Crane’s Artist Portfolio
Curator Katrina Slavik
The collage of Celia Crane “reacts to the anxiety and isolation entrenched in our society today,” writes Curator Katrina Slavik. “Failed social support systems, spiritual poverty, and deepening schisms in American politics divide the country when we should be coming together to heal. The work is unafraid to look at a collapsing world straight-on.” Shards of red, purple, and mauve paper tumble around an empty marble ionic pedestal in Guarding the Space That It Might Be Filled.
Crane and Slavik were part of Kolaj Institute’s Curating Collage Workshop that took place in Fall 2002. During that workshop, artists curated each other’s work. The result is this artist portfolio of Crane’s work which appears in Kolaj 33.
To see the complete Artist Portfolio, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue.
4”x6”; magazine clippings on fiberboard. Courtesy of the artist.
In Guarding the Space That It Might Be Filled, Crane juxtaposes Greco-Roman architecture with chaotic paper fragments to illustrate our tumultuous world. “But, not all is lost,” writes Slavik. “Wholeness and healing is discovered through the joyful process of cutting paper and arranging the broken pieces on the page to create something new and beautiful.”
To see the complete Artist Portfolio, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue.
12″x12″; magazine clippings on card stock. Courtesy of the artist.
In 2019, Celia Crane left an 18-year marketing career to focus on fiction writing and other creative pursuits. Collage soon became the primary interest and motivation in her life. During the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, she celebrated World Collage Day 2020 by converting an 8’x8’ garden shed into the Vayo Collage Gallery and held its first show, “Garden Within the Garden” in June 2020. Crane lives and works in Rochester, New York. Learn more by visiting her website www.celiacrane.com or Instagram @celia_crane and @vayocollagegallery.
Katrina Slavik holds a BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Slavik has shown her work in group exhibitions in and around New York City. Her solo exhibition, “Eternal Pigeons”, was at the Wild Bird Fund Window Gallery in New York City in 2020. As a curator, Slavik has curated exhibitions at Asya Geisberg Gallery and Field Projects Gallery, both in New York City. Slavik also took part in Kolaj’s Curating Collage Workshop, October-November 2020. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, the artist lives and works in Queens, New York. Learn more at www.katrinaslavik.com.
About the Curating Collage Workshop
The Curating Collage Workshop was a four-week, virtual/online workshop held in Fall 2020 with the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum of Art. The Workshop trained the twenty-one participating artists as curators. The group explored the fundamentals of curating, how to create critical context for collage, and various strategies for presenting collage to an audience. They also investigated art writing; gallery and museum issues; documenting artist practice; and working with art professionals. Each artist curated a collage from the collection of the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum of Art. They also curated each other’s work to produce a statement of practice, biography and critical context for a body of work, which was developed into a proposal for an exhibition or book. To learn about upcoming workshops from Kolaj Institute, sign-up to the mailing list.