AT KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS
Inhabiting New Worlds through the Augmented Collage Spatial Study
At Kolaj Fest New Orleans, participants will learn new techniques and methods of art making and collaboration that they can bring back to their own communities. Clive Knights and Jill Stoll will lead one such workshop focused on “Augmented Collage Spatial Study”.
“The Exquisite Chamber” introduces participants to a mode of creative practice that conjures new, imaginary, spatial worlds from found image fragments rich in material surface, light and shadow, perspectival depth, and human character. The workshop will use a roundtable process that rotates collages through seven collaborative stages whereby new extemporary additions are added to each work as they pass through the imagination and collage input of each participant. Therefore, each collage becomes the work of at least seven collaborators and aims to bring forth into visibility imaginary spaces, invented chambers, inconceivable by a single collagist.
How does it work? The process begins by each participant laying down an initial “backdrop” surface (imagine the back wall of a room), then all of these first gestures rotate clockwise around the table. The next stage of input proposes the floor surface of the chamber. Then, throughout further rotations an overhead condition is added, then walls to the left and to the right. Each time openings, apertures, thresholds, doorways, windows can be included to modulate enclosing surfaces. After a further rotation, a human figure (or figures) is collaged inside the emergent chamber. After one last rotation, the final input is added to synthesize the collage with the application of black and/or white dry pastel (enhancing chiaroscuro effects and spatial structure). Alongside this stage, artists are invited to compose a 2-3 paragraph narrative that characterizes the occupant of the chamber they have received, a task that makes each collage-maker responsible for interpreting the identity of the inhabitant(s), dwelling within, and informed by, their imaginary chamber.
“The introduction of visual and spatial ‘depth’ that the technique enables will offer participants a new dimension to their collage-making activities,” said Knights. “The technique can be adopted by others to enrich their own collage-making skills as well as paying it forward to other groups in their own creative communities.”
Note: Space is limited. RSVP required. To sign-up, send an email to info@kolajmagazine.com or speak to someone at the Kolaj Fest New Orleans Information Desk. First come, first serve and we will create a waiting list if all the spaces are filled.
About Kolaj Fest New Orleans
Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, July 10-14, 2019. Visit the website to learn more, see an overview of the program, and register to attend. Kolaj Fest New Orleans would not be possible without the support of Press Street, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, LeMieux Galleries, Mystic Krewe of Scissors and Glue, Antenna Gallery, Kolaj Magazine and Kasini House. Kolaj Fest New Orleans is made possible through a generous gift from Laurie and Doug Kanyer. WEBSITE
About Clive Knights
Based in Portland, Oregon, Clive Knights is a collage artist and printmaker, as well as a Professor of Architecture and the Director of the School of Architecture at Portland State University. For over three decades, he has deployed collage techniques in his teaching as a way of teasing out imaginary settings with depth and character from the flatness of a sheet of paper. He has exhibited his collages, monotypes and architectural drawings internationally since inclusion in the 1985 Venice Biennale. National venues have included Tacoma Museum of Art and participation in juried group shows at galleries and art centers across sixteen states. His article, “Stranger at the Studio Table”, about architecture and collage was published in Kolaj #17. His work was also included in Collage Artist Trading Cards, Pack 5, Cut Me Up Magazine #2, and Oltre Collage Fanzine #3. Learn more about the artist at www.cliveknights.com and on Instagram @knightsclive.
About Jill Stoll
Jill Stoll’s commitment to art and design has manifested in many creative adventures over the years, such as the time in her 20’s when she designed window displays for Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. Stoll earned a Master of Fine Art from Cranbrook Academy of Art and since then her teaching career has spanned nearly 20 years in places as diverse as New York, West Texas, Rome, and New Orleans in subjects that range from architectural design, drawing, collage, and darkroom photography. Stoll gathers what is lost and broken, be it (metaphorical) shards, sparks, husks or (physical) family snapshots, printed ephemera, hand held objects. She endeavors to repair and make them whole again in her New Orleans-based studio, where she navigates between control and release in her work. “Lost and Found” is the title of Stoll’s solo show on view during Kolaj Fest at BrickRed Gallery, 3614 St Claude Avenue. See more about the show on Instagram @brickredgallery. Learn more about the artist at www.jillstoll.com.
Images (top to bottom):
untitled
by a student of Clive Knights
8″x11″
cut paper, dry pastel
2019
untitled
by Clive Knights
8″x8″
layered paper, light
2018
Woman Standing Alone, Our All-American Girl
by Jill Stoll
24″x18″
photograph, paint chips, glue
2018