A Year of Rest and Thanks (all collages, begun in 2001)
A series of collages made from newspaper ads and clear tape, A Year of Rest and Thanks celebrates the ephemeral and the everyday as it comes to us in the form of newspapers.
All individual collages consist of between 4-10 layers of carefully cut out and laminated newspaper page parts including ads and printers marks/errors. The materials and methodology of creating the pieces pay homage to the anonymous layout/design artists and the printers of the ads. There are four principal series of works thus far.
1. The first series uses full and partial page mattress ads in architectural compositions. In some cases the notion of rest is accentuated or riffed upon, in others, a sense of whimsy. Scale: from 6”x8” to 23”x26”
2. The second series uses automobile ads in configurations shaped after sections of the MIR space station. Subtitled “Lemonade From Lemons: The MIR Space Station Refigures Itself as an Undersea Colony”, these “re-entry’ pieces are meant to be seen both individually and together in an expression of a hypothetical community made from debris.
Scale: in it’s first installed version all pieces together measure 8’x10’
3. The third series uses Tiffany jeweler advertisements. This series is largely in tones of off-white, in comparison to the more colorful mattress and car ad pieces, and capitalizes on the shadows in the ads while maintaining a sense of grace in the compositions. from 9”x3” to 18”x15”
4. The forth series uses Donald T. Sterling (Sterling Developers) ads in compositions that wrangle the relationship between housing and philanthropy, and between rest and action.
