Archive for the ‘1) Available!’ Category
Monday, February 8th, 2016
“Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.”
– Frank Zappa
Obviously, collage is not made out of nothing, but the ingredient elements can be little more than rubbish — material of scant value, or literally with no intrinsic worth. Find the most rejected, undesirable, recycling-bin content, castoffs destined for a landfill, or something which never should have been thoughtlessly tossed out a truck window in the first place, and you have the potential for art. That idea excites me nearly as much as the ensuing process of reclaiming it for a new purpose.
Give Him Wine!
collage miniature by J A Dixon
6.5 x 9 inches
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Posted in 1) Available!, Collage, Ingredients, J A Dixon | No Comments »
Sunday, January 24th, 2016
“Ever have one of those collages where every time you add something, it just makes it more difficult to finish?”
– T R Flowers
What Terry Flowers alludes to in his recent question to collage artists is certainly an ever-present concern for a minimalist, but even a maximalist can find it difficult to discover the proper conclusion for a collage. Some say that the medium of collage has no rules. I think of it more as the rules changing in front of us until a balanced resolution takes shape, and then, perhaps arbitrarily, victory can be declared.
Unit Citation
collage miniature by J A Dixon
7.5 x 9.375 inches
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Posted in 1) Available!, Collage, J A Dixon, Maximalism/Minimalism, Rules of Collage, T R Flowers | No Comments »
Sunday, January 10th, 2016
“The pitch is fairly simple – we invite a bunch of our favorite local and regional artists to show us their latest work – made since August of this year. The artists have a ton of energy and momentum for this show because they know that people will see their work, they know that the other artists are putting together something amazing, so there is a lot of positive peer pressure to make some outstanding work.”
— Brandon Long
One of my most anticipated exhibitions of the year is the annual New Year New Art show at our local Community Arts Center. For the fourth year running, the invitational has been organized by Brandon Long. The current installment is the biggest ever. A versatile artist and designer in his own right, Long is a confidante, motivator, and energetic ambassador for the arts in Central Kentucky. He has both the artist’s and the institution’s best interests at heart, and that is not an easy balancing act to pull off. Whatever else may transpire in the year to follow, it is gratifying to display new work of my own choosing among friends and fellow collage artists such as Kathleen O’Brien and Connie Beale. If you are in the area and weather cooperates, be sure to check out this outstanding January show.
Knowing that whatever I create will have a public unveiling, surrounded by selections from some of the finest regional artists, has challenged me to transcend self-imposed perceptions about the medium of collage. It also has spurred me to lift my artisanship up another notch for the upcoming year. Two ideas converged to spark Pearallelograms — more details about the piece in my next entry.
Pearallelograms
collage construction by J A Dixon
22 x 22 inches
available for purchase
Posted in 1) Available!, B Long, C E Beale, Exhibitions, Fruit Series, Influences, J A Dixon, K O’Brien, Larger Works, New Year New Art | No Comments »
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
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Posted in 1) Available!, Ingredients, J A Dixon, Symbolism | No Comments »
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
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Posted in 1) Available!, A Bealy, Criticism, H Kroll, J A Dixon, M Rose, R Plowman, T R Flowers, Z Collins | No Comments »
