I have a stash of old NY Times newspapers, all dated 1991. They were dirty (sooty, not moldy) and had been sitting in someone’s attic or basement for years. Shout out to Maddie for buying them in Woodstock, NY and asking me if I wanted to share. I did buy some, but resisted using them, and then created a collage for an exhibition called Schwitters’ Army that was organized by Ric Kasini Kadour, founder and editor of KOLAJ magazine. FYI: Kolaj is the Turkish word for collage and the phonetic spelling for collage in French.
Nikkal, Curvy Geo Circles
The image nearby is the finished collage I sent to the exhibition titled Schwitters’ Army that will be part of the permanent collage at the Merz Gallery in Sanquhar, Scotland.. My collage has a lot of tiny cut and pasted papers, including little square pieces I cut from the NY Times newspapers (I pulled the papers out of a brown paper shopping bag lying on the floor in my studio). I added magazine papers with text and numbers (ArtForum magazine), tiny drawings with numbers and the letters X and O I found in my flat file drawers, and included a train ticket stub and receipts that were in my wallet.
Nikkal, painted papers on the floor
I painted the papers you see above. They are drying on papers on the floor in my studio.
Kurt Schnitters, Untitled Collage
The image at left is an untitled collage by Kurt Schwitters created with papers he found on the street. Notice how the papers overlap and some are wrinkled.
Backstory: Ric Kassini Kadour posted a call in Kolaj Magazine for artists to make a tiny collage inspired by Schwitters (German, 1887-1948). We had to send our collage by post to Scotland. The collage could not be larger than 10 x 8 inches. My collage is 10 x 7 inches (21.4 x 17.78 cm) and arrived safely (I had to pay a duty fee), and now it belongs to the Merz Gallery in Scotland.
See all works HERE that were submitted by artists like me for this the exhibition. Every collage is different and there are a lot of works to see.
Kurt Schnitters, Merz
Kurt Schwitters created hundreds of collages in a body of works he called MERZ. He collected garbage – actual trash – from the streets, and his art practice was conceptually about how seemingly unconnected objects and ideas can be art.
Read more about Kurt Schwitters and Merz HERE.
I think Ric Kasini Kadour was extremely clever to create a call for art and title it Schwitters’ Army. So many modern and contemporary artists – me included – are inspired to make collage because of Kurt Schwitters. We are all his army.
Collage is about making connections.