ARTIST PORTFOLIO
Mister Koppa
Viroqua, Wisconsin, USA
“I first began to explore collage while creating a fanzine for my family’s grocery store in 1993,” writes Mister Koppa. “Through free association amidst a carefully selected and limited library of source material, I stumble upon surprising relationships and juxtapositions, which may mean something or nothing, but always satisfy my craving for amusement.”
A portfolio of Mister Koppa’s work appears in Kolaj #17. To see this portfolio and others from the issue, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue.
It began with a healthy obsession—trips to second-hand stores, flea markets, and used bookstores—gathering material to be cut and arranged in an anthology of creative writing, drawing and pasting.
Mister Koppa lives with his wife and two daughters on a dead end street in Viroqua, Wisconsin. His historic love of lettering and drawing and an interest in books and collage led him to create the world’s first grocery fanzine, The Sphere, in 1993. In the years that followed, he published books, made collage, founded Heavy Duty Press and Viroqua Creative Workshop, titles from which have been featured in Kolaj Magazine many times. His website is www.misterkoppa.com.
SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue to see portfolios of work by contemporary collage artists.
Images by Mister Koppa
Top: c230 The Innocent Contemplation of Life in English (9.6″x13.6″; inside cover of Dr. Seuss’s ABC book formerly owned by Eric Norman, commercially printed 20th-century encyclopedia and magazine paper, and acid free permanent adhesive; August 2016)
Centre: c233 The Kernels in Your Corn Are Needing Some Replacement (5.5″x7.5″; commercially printed 20th-century encyclopedia and calendar paper, business card, and acid free permanent adhesive; August 2016)
Bottom: c162 The Transfiguration of Raphael (10″x7″; commercially printed paper, antique lithographic prints, assembled with bees’ waxed book binding thread on cotton rag paper; 2011)