JBR Stories
Stories come to me in images, and images inspire stories.
Starting with pictures from magazines, I use scissors and glue to move mountains, divert rivers and reconfigure rooms .To complete the scene I introduce images which are lit in a way that echoes the setting. The pictures are the flesh and bone of each collage, but the lighting is its spirit.
Beyond focus and atmosphere, lighting can give an immediacy to a scene. When the light seems to reach each figure from the same source, it eases the struggle between eye and mind, so that the viewer doesn’t wonder if all the images belong, but why they are there. The answer becomes a story, a story which connects a viewer to the artist, to the other viewers, and to themselves.
Reduce, Reuse, Make Art
My focus on reuse in the arts dates back to 1989 when I produced and moderated a seminar titled “Recycling in the Theatre”. From 1989 to 2007 I coordinated the Set Recycling Hotline, which diverted discarded scenery from dumpsters to small theatre companies with limited budgets.
On a smaller scale, I do that with my art. I cut the images in my collages from magazines and brochures left in my building’s recycling basket, then mount the collages on repurposed materials such as cardboard and matboard, which are themselves collaged.
My assemblages use materials ranging from old paint that peeled off a porch, lids from cans, foil from candy bars, dried teabags stained with tea, as well as natural materials such as dried leaves, husks from ears of corn, and bark from fallen trees.