Ho Ho Hosanna
collage miniature by J A Dixon
private collection
Archive for the ‘J A Dixon’ Category
A Most Merry Merry!
Friday, December 25th, 2015Tender and Wild
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015“Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.”
– Stephen Sondhiem
I was in the “Seasonal Zone,” listening to music and making a batch of hand-made greetings and collage miniatures. I began to recycle Christmas cards from previous years, and I had the idea of trying to visually merge two different but similar images. Nothing seemed to go right as my technique played out. One cannot anticipate nor contrive the “fortunate accidents” inherent in the medium. The resulting effect reminds me of an aging fresco, as if an artist had painted a Madonna and Child over another, with the decay of time and weather taking over. I rarely think too much about these things in process, with reflection arriving later. I especially enjoy when others make observations and symbolic associations of their own. Overall, I think my sweet obsession with collage may be about trying to bring some kind of harmony out of the sense of disorder that pervades much of modern perception, although I should hesitate to generalize about my personal state of being and apply it to the world.
Tender and Wild
collage miniature by J A Dixon
7 x 9.5 inches
private collection
Collage experiments as gift art
Wednesday, December 16th, 2015“Man himself is mute, and it is the image that speaks. For it is obvious that the image alone can keep pace with nature.”
— Boris Pasternak
I have come to the point where nearly all of my December gifts are hand-crafted items, many of which feature experimental images of one sort or another. Some end up being studies for larger works. Shown below are a couple of little artifacts that have resulted so far from my lead-up to the holidays — examples of how gift art can hover between descriptive categories. Both are more than greeting-card covers, but not advanced enough to be called true collage miniatures. Intrinsic value is always a matter of opinion, but, at any rate, people usually appreciate being invited into the artistic process.
two small, year-end gifts
collage artifacts by J A Dixon
(click to view larger)
Lucid Nativity
Wednesday, December 9th, 2015“Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.”
– Ray Bradbury
All collage artists appropriate and harness the previous creative expenditures of countless others — photographers, sculptors, paper chemists, illustrators, product designers, typographers. This is true for even the most abstract practitioners, but certainly for those of us who find and work with representational scrap. I cannot help but notice that images born of religious intent have increasingly found a place within my collage artworks, and I have decided that I shall not be self-conscious about it. There is never a goal of irony, sarcasm, or disdain. The imagery just seems to “belong.” Perhaps, for me, it is an attempt to balance the darkness of chaos with an element of the sublime. Within the spatial montage, or within myself? I may have to think about that a bit more.
Lucid Nativity
collage miniature by J A Dixon
4.5 x 6.25 inches
Purchase this artwork!
Core Memories
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2015“Before I can discard the verse, I have to write it… I can’t discard a verse before it is written because it is the writing of the verse that produces whatever delights or interests or facets that are going to catch the light. The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.”
– Leonard Cohen
I admire many of the more prolific collage artists — Kroll, Rose, Bealy, Tidwell, Flowers, Collins, to name only a few — but there can be a significant contrast between “work ethic” and the contrived productivity made trendy by social networking. It was interesting when Plowman was climbing the mountain of “Collage A Day.” Now one has to pass the corpses being stacked beside the route up the peak. Most of us can tell the difference between a display of ongoing professionalism and the indiscriminate output of those with a high need for public approval. That being said, someone who is a blogger on “all things collage” might carelessly tread into the latter while neglecting the former. If I do, or if this site lapses into pretension, I challenge you to call me on it. Please. Nevertheless, we should all keep in mind that the nature of the medium invites the floating of one’s work for an appropriate give-and-take interaction. Offering intuition and spontaneity free rein means that often we can be too close to the culminating artifact to perceive many of the symbolic connections or nuanced associations, and that takes feedback. It may take other sets of eyes to tell us whether the gem sparkles or not. Our handy interweb makes it easy to lavish “likes” on one another in lieu of the genuine constructive criticism we require to fortify our studio rituals. Are we finally ready to move past mutual thumbs-upping and to become more candid with each other?
Core Memories
collage miniature by J A Dixon
4.875 x 7 inches
Purchase this artwork!
A Dirty Family
Wednesday, November 18th, 2015
A Dirty Family
collage miniature by J A Dixon
4.75 x 6.75 inches
private collection
Ever Crawling Forth
Wednesday, November 11th, 2015
Ever Crawling Forth
collage miniature by J A Dixon
5.5 x 6 inches
available for purchase
According to His Virtue
Wednesday, November 4th, 2015
According to His Virtue
collage miniature by J A Dixon
4.5 x 4.5 inches
Purchase this artwork!
B O O !
Wednesday, October 28th, 2015
Unkind Reckoning
collage miniature by J A Dixon
6 x 7 inches
Purchase this artwork!
Ninety Naughty Gnats
Wednesday, October 21st, 2015“A special thank you to Helen Reiss, who brought me this crazy manuscript and thought I might like to illustrate it. I had a better idea!”
– Allan Bealy
I am pleased to share an announcement from Allan Bealy that his newest publication is available— ABCurdities: A Collage Alphabet, and it is an honor to be part of an outstanding group that includes Allan, Matthew Rose, Ted Tollefson, Nikki Soppelsa, Zach Collins, Marc Deb, Frank Voigt, Musta Fior, Michael Tunk, and many other fine collage practitioners. Allan assigned 26 collage artists from around the world a letter of the alphabet and asked each of us to interpret a corresponding absurdist poem by Helen Reiss. The delightful result is now available for online purchase!
Helen’s wild verse for “N” offered a wealth of associations and challenged me to illustrate the perfect level of “visual naughtiness.” I also wanted to embed the letterform, but not in a way that would be too obvious. Do you see it? Some may not. I find it fascinating to observe how each of us used her poems as a catalyst for creativity, while investigating an individual approach to the medium — one more example of how collaboration can enhance the artistic process. A tip o’ the cap to the designer/compiler!
N
collage miniature by J A Dixon
a contribution to ABCurdities: A Collage Alphabet
8 x 8 inches