Money Money Collage Artist Residency

COLLAGE RESIDENCY

Kolaj Institute Announces Artists Selected for the Money Money Collage Residency

Kolaj Institute is pleased to announce the ten artists selected to participate in the Money Money Collage Residency. During the four-week, project-driven residency, collage artists work together to create a series of collages that illustrate Eleanor H. Porter’s 1918 novel, Oh, Money! Money!. The result will be a book published by Kolaj Institute and launched at Kolaj LIVE Milwaukee in July 2021. The residency is being done in conjunction with “The Money $how” at Saint Kate–The Arts Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

“The Money $how” is co-curated by Frank Juarez, the publisher of Artdose Magazine, and Ric Kasini Kadour, the editor of Kolaj Magazine. A tour of late-stage capitalism, each artist in the exhibition uses collage to unpack ideas about money and its influence on our culture. The curators start from the premise that money is an idea that shapes contemporary life and present works that invite viewers to consider cash, labor, and capital. In addition to the exhibition, Kolaj Institute is publishing the book, The Money $how: Cash, Labor, Capitalism, & Collage, in which Kadour juxtaposes contemporary artwork against fragments of American history and literature as a way of showing how collage can help us deconstruct culture and understand the world differently. 

In Eleanor H. Porter’s 1918 novel, Oh, Money! Money!, a Chicago multi-millionaire struggles to decide to whom he should leave his money. As an eccentric experiment, he schemes to give his three distant cousins one hundred thousand dollars each to see how they handle the windfall. The book is a time capsule of early 20th century American life with a strong focus on the lives of women and observations about material culture and communities before the rampant consumerism of the 1920s and the Great Depression. In telling this story, Porter gives us a look at the role of and attitudes about money that remain relevant today. The book raises important questions about the role of money in our lives: What good is money? Is money cruel? How should one handle money? How does money change us?

Artists will discuss the themes raised in Porter’s novel, hear from guest speakers, and collage together. The group will collectively produce a series of twenty-six collages, one for each of the chapters in Porter’s novel.

Christopher Kurts will serve as art director for this project, lead collage making sessions, and facilitate the collaboration. Heather Ryan Kelley will speak about “The Midden Heap Project” in which she made a collage response to each page of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. Jeanna Penn will speak about how she uses collage to interpret historical material including her project “Souls of Black Folk” collage series inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois’ seminal book where he sets out to “have briefly sketched…with loving emphasis and deeper detail, that men may listen to the striving in the souls of black folk.” Nancy Bernardo will speak about collage as illustration, the visual essay she contributed to the book Deconstructing Brad Pitt, and how collage artists can engage with the marketplace for illustration. Ric Kasini Kadour will present a theoretical overview of collage, share “The Money $how” exhibition, and facilitate the discussion of Porter’s book.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Alicia Halpin is a self-taught, late-in-life artist whose main focus is mixed-media art that uses repurposed or recycled materials. After a life-changing car accident in 2020, her focus has shifted to exploring digital art. Her work has been shown locally in juried museum shows and has won awards. She has dabbled in acrylic, oil, and watercolor painting, ceramic clay, polymer clay, papier-mâché, collage, mask and costume-making, mosaics, needle art, beading, and pysanky (batik-dyed eggs) and eggshell carving. The artist lives and works in the St. Louis Metro region. Instagram @qnbeearts.

Amanda Lynch holds a BA in Fine Art and an MA in Arts from De Montfort University. Lynch works with mixed media, from sculptural forms to 2d works. Lynch’s work explores social engagement and practice, within community-based projects. Lynch’s work is held in international and national private collections, as well as CloseLTD gallery collection. She has exhibited throughout the United Kingdom, including the Somerset Arts Festival 2019 and abroad, exhibiting in Canada as part of the Gushul residency in Alberta (2016). Her work has appeared in group shows in The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. She was artist-in-residence at Gulshul in Blairmore, Alberta (2016) and at CEDA in the United Kingdom (2020, 2021). The artist splits her time between Somerset and London. www.amandalynchart.com

Elijah Guerra is a genderqueer Latino artist who makes handmade analog collages. His work explores themes such as environmental crisis, the search for home, and humanity’s place in the universe. His collages have appeared in WashU’s The Spectacle magazine. He lives in Columbia, Missouri, and is a literature PhD student at University of Missouri. Instagram @deercrossingthesea.

G. E. Vogt‘s original training was as a performance art­ist and director. Her perfor­mance pieces evolved into living collages of the materi­als gathered to create viscer­al stories for the audience. Collage is now Ms Vogt’s pri­mary medium, with a focus on political and social work. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions in California, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Washington. Her first solo show was at Fresh Paint Gallery in La Jolla, California in 2019. She was also a panelist on the “Women in Collage” panel at Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2019. Most recently, she has begun curating the SoPoCollage page on Instagram to showcase other artists who specialize in social and political collage. The artist lives and works in San Diego, California. www.aworldinpieces.com

Indira Govindan is a retired academician with a doctorate in social sciences and a lifelong passion for art and craft making. She holds no formal degree in art, but she has taken many courses and workshops with artists who are well regarded in their fields, including a year-long course with collagist Randel Plowman and a six-week course in Advanced Botanical Illustration at Cornell University. Several articles by the artist were published in the now-defunct Cloth Paper Scissors magazine and her artwork has appeared in Uppercase magazine. She has won first and third place for two years in a row in the New Jersey Senior Show. Govindan is a member of the Selection Committee for Member Shows at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey. The artist lives and works in Springfield, New Jersey. dharmakarmaarts.blogspot.com

Originally from Buenos Aires, Jimena Murabito learned photography over a decade as she traveled and worked throughout South America, Europe and the United States. Landing in Miami, she eventually moved to New York to attend New York University. She has also lived in California, the United Kingdom and Italy. A global citizen, Murabito calls New York home base. The artist specializes in analogue collage, using predominantly photo transfers and mixed media. www.jamart.club

Kara Smith is an artist and art educator based in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts. She holds an MA in Art Education from Brooklyn College, and a BFA from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. She has been awarded residencies at MASS MoCA, The Vermont Studio Center, Brooklyn Art Space, and Drop, Forge and Tool, and has exhibited regularly throughout the Northeast. In 2019, she had her first solo exhibition in New York City at ChaShaMa and created her first site-specific permanent installation at TurnPark Art Space in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts. That same year, she was the recipient of The Martha Boschen Porter Award, a Fund of Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation to support a 2020 solo exhibit at Avalanche Art Space in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Smith is currently a Teaching Artist and the Program Coordinator at Community Access to the Arts (CATA), an arts organization in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts that provides visual and performing arts workshops to individuals with disabilities. www.kara-smith.com

Mary A. Johnson holds an MFA from the State University of New York. She has shown her work globally including the New York Hall of Science, the Nekrasov Library in Moscow, and multiple art centers and museums in China. Her work has been in group exhibitions juried by Jerry Saltz and Garth Johnson; and collected by the Shanghai Art Collections Museum. Additionally, her work has been included in multiple international publications, including Rebeka Elizegi’s book Collage by Women: 50 Essential Contemporary Artists. Her studio practice emphasizes the unstable and unreliable. The artist lives and works in Denton, Texas. www.maryajohnson.com.

mateo desant was born and raised in Mexico City under the name of Luis Avalos Trujillo. mateo and Luis are like two sides of the same coin. They are distinct, yet one. However, he can no longer tell which one of them is his true self. Luis Avalos Trujillo is studying for a PhD in Economics at the University of California, Davis. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship. Prior to arriving in California, he worked in finance for the Mexican government and holds a degree with honors in Applied Mathematics. mateo desant was born as in 2003 as an exercise in art therapy. Over time, mateo has taken a more definite form. He started as a self-taught poet. A handful of his poems have appeared in magazines in Mexico and Spain. www.mateodesant.com

Susan Silva is an artist teacher who lives in Northern Virginia. Her collages are constructed as a response to current events and social issues, teasing the viewer with the surreal environments that result. One of her collages was featured in an article in Kolaj 32 about the TELEPHONE web-based interactive project. Her mail art appeared in the online exhibition “Pushing the Envelope: A Mail Art Gallery Show” by Frank Juarez Gallery and SchoolArts Magazine (September-October 2020) and Jason Brown’s “VOTE!! A Mail Art Project” (2020), which is now housed in Special Collections at the Vanderbilt University Library. pseudonym-for-silva.blogspot.com

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ABOUT KOLAJ INSTITUTE

The mission of Kolaj Institute is to support artists, curators, and writers who seek to study, document, & disseminate ideas that deepen our understanding of collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a 21st century movement. We operate a number of initiatives meant to bring together community, investigate critical issues, and raise collage’s standing in the art world. WEBSITE

ABOUT KOLAJ MAGAZINE

Kolaj Magazine is a quarterly, printed, art magazine reviewing and surveying contemporary collage with an international perspective. We are interested in collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a 21st century art movement. WEBSITE

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FACULTY

Christopher Kurts
Christopher Kurts is a storyteller, artist, and the Coordinator for Kolaj Institute. Kurts is also the co-founder and lead organizer of The Mystic Krewe of Scissors and Glue, a group of creatives in New Orleans who meet monthly to collage, converse and foster community. His work appeared in “The Heart of a Dark Universe”, curated by Kevin Comarda at Bar Redux; and “Unfamiliar Vegetables”, a group show and book he helped organize for Kolaj Fest New Orleans at Artisan Bar & Cafe in Summer 2019. In the fall of 2019, Kurts curated, “The Lifting of the Veil: The Optimist’s Apocalypse”, a group show. His art was also featured in issue #4 of Loner Magazine. www.christopherkurts.com

Jeanna Penn
Jeanna Penn is a contemporary artist who lives and works between Oakland and Los Angeles, California. She has been creating art for over twenty-five years in various forms including mixed media collage, soft sculpture, photography, zines and documentary film. Much of Jeanna’s work is centered around recontextualizing found imagery and documenting material histories. She received her BA in African American Studies from Morgan State University and continued graduate work in African History at Howard University and Historical Documentary Filmmaking at George Washington University.

Jeanna also supports other artists’ work by curating art exhibitions, designing and producing public murals, and working as an arts manager. Along with her partner/husband, Stash Maleski, she runs ICU Art, a commercial mural art company. With ICU Art, they are able to fulfill their personal mission of creating opportunities for artists so they can support themselves and their families without having to sacrifice their artistic practices.

Jeanna’s work has been shown at the Arts Guild of Sonoma (California); The Art Cave in Santa Cruz, California; The Barret Art Center (New York); Eyelevel Centre (Nova Scotia). In 2020, she was published in Create Magazine. JeannaPennArt.com 

Nancy Bernardo
Nancy Bernardo currently lives in Rochester, New York and has been a practicing graphic designer for 22 years. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been an educator for 14 years. Bernardo’s work has been commissioned for book cover designs such as: Checking In/Checking Out (NO Books, 2010), New Orleans Review Art + Literary Magazine (2009-2014), Deconstructing Brad Pitt (Bloomsbury Press, 2011 and discussed in Kolaj 11) and History of Design: Beyond the Canon (Bloomsbury Press, 2018).

Bernardo has been recognized and awarded honors through Graphis Design Annual, Print Regional Design Awards, Design Observer 50 Books 50 Covers, HOW In-House Design Award, HOW Best of International Design and STA 100. Her work has also been exhibited in Rochester, New Orleans, Seattle, Chicago, New York City and in the United Kingdom. www.nancyabernardo.net 

Heather Ryan Kelley
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Heather Ryan Kelley is a professor of art at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where she teaches painting and book arts. She holds a BFA in printmaking from Southern Methodist University and an MA in painting from Northwestern State University. In 2009 she established The Midden Heap Press, a press devoted to collage, printmaking, and artist books related to Finnegans Wake.

The first of the collages from The Midden Heap Project were shown in Charleston, South Carolina in 2013. As the project has progressed, it has been shown at Antenna Gallery’s Reading Room 220 in 2016; the University of Toronto’s Diasporic Joyce Conference in 2017; and, in 2018, portions of the project were displayed at the University of Antwerp’s Joyce Conference, in “Joyce in Art” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, in “Shelflife” at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, Louisiana, and in a solo exhibition at the Baton Rouge Gallery.

Kelley’s work based upon Finnegans Wake is in the collections of Cornell University, the New York Public Library’s Berg Collection, The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, and the State University of New York at Buffalo. It has been featured on the James Joyce Quarterly, the James Joyce Broadsheet, and the James Joyce Literary Supplement.  www.heatherryankelley.com

Ric Kasini Kadour
Ric Kasini Kadour, a 2021 recipient of a Curatorial Fellowship from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, is a writer, artist, publisher, and cultural worker. With the Vermont Arts Council, he curated “Connection: The Art of Coming Together” (2017) and Vermont Artists to Watch (2018, 2019, 2020). In New Orleans (2018-2019), he curated “Revolutionary Paths” at Antenna Gallery and “Cultural Deconstructions” at LeMieux Galleries. As Curator of Contemporary Art at Rokeby Museum in Ferrisburgh, Vermont (2019-2020), he curated “Rokeby Through the Lens”, “Structures”, and “Mending Fences: New Works by Carol MacDonald”. At the Southern Vermont Arts Center (2019), he curated “Contemporary American Regionalism: Vermont Perspectives” and “Where the Sun Casts No Shadow: Postcards from the Creative Crossroads of Quito, Ecuador”. With Frank Juarez, he co-curated “The Money $how: Cash, Labor, Capitalism & Collage” at Saint Kate-The Arts Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (April-September 2021). Kadour is editor and publisher of Kolaj Magazine. His writing has appeared in Hyperallergic, OEI, Vermont Magazine, Seven Days, and Art New England (where he was the Vermont editor). In Winter 2020, he was artist-in-residence at MERZ Gallery in Sanquhar, Scotland. He holds a BA in Comparative Religion from the University of Vermont.  www.rickasinikadour.com