Isn't Emily's work fantastic? Would you believe she's still in high school? I wish I was this good back then, or even now! She definitely has a style already and has a great handle on layout and themes. Her work has a great retro quality, probably because of her careful thought out material choices. I look forward to seeing her progress!

Name (Real or Screename): Emily Haasch
URL (Blog, Website): www.flickr.com/photos/shinytoypigeons/
Location (Where are you from?): I currently reside in Roscoe, Illinois, USA.

Q: Describe your work in 10 words or less.
A: A blasphemy of calculated scientific explosions and aesthetic arrest.

Q: What do you like to work with (magazines, photographs, vintage)? Be specific!
A: I mostly prefer paper, usually vintage, although I sometimes incorporate small found objects, film, or classroom art supplies. My sources tend to veer from the traditional books and magazines, as I prefer old tax forms, receipts, order forms, envelopes, foreign magazines, notebooks, children's textbooks, colored papers, photos, fabrics, or anything that has an image, texture, or numbers that strike me. I currently work physically, but later on I might start doing digital work.

Q: How long have you been creating collages and what made you start?
A: I've been creating them since freshman year of high school, although I have been only getting serious about my work within the past two years or so. I'm not sure exactly what started it all, but I believe it was a collage project that my teacher had assigned me in class during our Romare Bearden unit.

Q: Are you solely an artist, or do you work in another profession?
A: I am currently a senior in high school, and have not started selling my work yet, so no. Right now I'm focusing on finishing school and getting into college.

Q: Do you have any formal art training?
A: Not yet! I do plan to study design in college, though.

Q: Explain your favourite techniques.
A: I don't know if I have any in particular, it's just the movement or shapes and layering of textures that draws me to collage. I like to see myself as solving a problem using the visual components and composition, my goal being to express the same feeling or emotion I associate with an image or line to the person viewing the work.

Q: Describe your favourite piece ever created.
A: Probably one titled postcard no. 28. It is a postcard I sent to the Netherlands through Postcrossing. I was very sad to see it go, indeed.

Q: What other artists do you admire?
A: He doesn't know it, but my biggest inspiration is a guy from Buenos Aires named Marcelo. I also admire Tabitha Brown, Matthew Partridge, Joseph Cornell, JR, Becky and Frank, Curt Readel, Romare Bearden, and KC Green.

Thanks Emily!

Nick has an amazing understanding of texture and it's no surprise that it's inspired by the music he listens too. I don't think we talk about that enough—how music inspires what we are currently working on and shapes our personal styles. I am reminded of an assignment I had to do once, creating a piece to music I am used to, and one with something completely different. See how it turned out here. I really enjoyed this in depth insight in to Nick's work, his lovely layered, distressed collages are quite inspiring!

Name (Real or Screename): Nicholas Woodruff
URL (Blog, Website): www.flickr.com/photos/cut_it_glue_it_see_it
Location (Where are you from?): Kent, United Kingdom.

Q: Describe your work in 10 words or less.
A: Experimental, abstract, graphic, typographic, visual noise.

Q: What do you like to work with (magazines, photographs, vintage)? Be specific!
A: Anything with interesting colours and textures but mostly in printed, paper form. I look out for materials all the time, they can come from anywhere. If something has potential then I like to apply paint and/or scratches to the surface to make it my own. I also find interesting type fonts online and print them off to cut up and deconstruct. Distressed, weathered paper or cardboard boxes can be appealing too, I seem to find a lot of interesting pieces outside. Masking tape is a must for me, I'm never without a roll!

Q: How long have you been creating collages and what made you start?
A: It's been ten years or so now but I did have a three of four year break from it, before I found my passion again. I stopped because I became interested in interior design but then realised that I wanted to create collages again, the urge never went away. I studied art originally and then moved onto graphic design. During the transition, I found that I enjoyed cutting things up including typography within the imagery. My styles evolved several times before I eventually found what I am now comfortable with. Although, I'm sure it will change again, it's an ongoing process.

Q: Are you solely an artist, or do you work in another profession?
A: I really enjoy interior design and work as a designer during the day. I make time (as much as I can) in the evenings for creating collages, it's a way of escaping and just switching off. My work is inspired by the music I listen to and I don't think I could create imagery as well as I could, if I was in silence.

Q: Do you have any formal art training?
A: Yes, I studied 2D & 3D design, along with art and graphic design in varying levels but I'm pretty much self taught. I think I even used to annoy my tutors, as all my projects seemed to finish up as a collage! Collage is a combination of experimentation and technique, it's unique in that sense. I'm not sure if you can be tought collage but that's just speaking from personal experience.

Q: Explain your favourite techniques.
A: I create patterns and textures first. I start by painting, tearing, cutting and crumpling up paper and card before stacking them into piles, I make sure I have a good supply of material. I then use a thick carboard base to stick the layers onto. A collage could take a few minutes of a few days, or even weeks to create. A lot of the process is by experimentation and chance so you have to be patient. I especially enjoy creating layers, masking tape is a great tool for this. I apply the tape to imagery, then press it down and then pull it back off to see what happens. I will then use both the tape and the material left over. I throw very little away, all the off cuts are recycled into another collage, these are often the best bits.

Q: Describe your favourite piece ever created.
A: It's probably 'Untitled Five' There is a lot of layers in this piece and I was pleased with the final outcome. I focus on getting a good balance of colour, composition and detail. I have been trying to introduce more colour into my work recently and this piece was a good example.

Q: What other artists do you admire?
A: I like all the collage legends but I also like graphic designers like Tomato, David Carson and Vaughan Oliver. They are big influences to me. I'm also inspired by musical artists such as Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and Autechre. There is a strong connection with the music I listen to and the images I create.

Thanks Nick!

The work of Jenkins is quite outstanding. His use of bright, and mostly primary colours makes it very eye-catching and hard to miss, I had to look at all the images in his Flickr photostream. There was such a large body of work, and all of it so unique I could have picked anything to show you! I could do a whole post about his "little black books" alone!

Name (Real or Screename): JENKINS
URL (Blog, Website): www.seesomework.co.uk/books, www.flickr.com/littleblackbooks
Location (Where are you from?): Brighton, England

Q: Describe your work in 10 words or less.
A: Frenetic, intense play.

Q: What do you like to work with (magazines, photographs, vintage)? Be specific!
A: Beautiful cuts from mundane images, paper, pencils, pens, paint, print, glue, and any technology in an unexpected way.

Q: How long have you been creating collages and what made you start?
A: I met Peter Blake when he was artist in residence at The National in 1993. His incredible passion, craft and celebration for everything and anything that could create an image made me want to experiment and play. In one hour he changed my perception of everything that was possible. He also had about ten works on the go at once, and incredible, warm energy.

Q: Are you solely an artist, or do you work in another profession?
A: I also work for many art galleries as a designer.

Q: Do you have any formal art training?
A: Yes. I went to Central Saint Martins.

Q: Explain your favourite techniques.
A: Speed (understanding time), seriously, I think that is an important technique to me. I often hate a piece if I work on it for too long, it loses energy, passion and erases the beautiful accidents. Drawing and painting are also my first love, I'll often start there and layer colour, collage and printing techniques into any area of this. One of my favourite techniques is layering, erasing, etching and muting photographs with my own marks to blend them into the image. I'm also very comfortable pulling things into the computer briefly to 'bind' it together and then push it out to paper through any means and keep working with it. I'm having loads of fun with a crappy inkjet printer, archival paper and paint at the moment. I'm open to working with anything.

Q: Describe your favourite piece ever created.
A: This is always the one I'm doing right now, right at the point when I look back and smile. Then it's gone and onto the next...

Q: What other artists do you admire?
A: Gosh! how long have you got: Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy. John Maeda, Max Huber, The WAFA Collective, Kate Banazi, Peter Saville, Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, the list is just endless...

Thanks Jenkins!

Serge's collages are quite beautiful. Their emotion and feeling remind me a lot of Eduardo Recife's work, but they have a unique aura about them. I enjoy the nuances of tone in each piece of detail, the soft grays and pinks and yellows, etc. I am excited to see where he goes with these collages!

Name (Real or Screename): Serge
URL (Blog, Website): www.flickr.com/photos/hologramxx, xmilkyboy.livejournal.com
Location (Where are you from?): Málaga, Spain

Q: Describe your work in 10 words or less.
A: A moment, expression, feelings, thoughts, chaos, organized, contradiction, design...

Q: What do you like to work with (magazines, photographs, vintage)? Be specific!
A: I work with a great variety of resources. Photography, illustration, magazines, textures, among others things… I’ve been also collecting for some years little details, for example tickets of everything; I try to use everything I can and it’s funny. I often prefer old stuff, but sometimes I prefer to take commercial stuff and change radically the look.

Q: How long have you been creating collages and what made you start?
A: I love drawing and painting since I was a child, when I was 12 or so I started to play and experiment with some kind of collage with Photoshop. But it wasn’t until some years ago, when I really found out what collage meant, then I became very fascinated about it and I began to try making some. I’m taking it seriously so recently, though.

Q: Are you solely an artist, or do you work in another profession?
A: Well I am a graphic designer.

Q: Do you have any formal art training?
A: I’ve just discovered some interesting techniques and a new vision while I was in painting classes a long time ago. But I really use my design knowledge and it is as useful as nice. I even adore looking at true artists, who I really appreciate, and their work, so I can learn a lot.

Q: Explain your favourite techniques.
A: I don’t have just one in particular. I enjoy making as digital as handmade collages, I love both, each one give me different things and techniques. I’m very versatile with it in this case, I can get very contradictory collages. My favourite part is the experiment definitely. I usually think the most beautiful of making collages is you’re never sure of what the final result will be, it’s full of surprise, spontaneity, creativity and evolution.

Q: Describe your favourite piece ever created.
A: It’s hard to say. Sometimes you have some favourite creations which are more special than others for different reasons, but it’s inevitable not to fall in love with the last. I can’t even say just one, all of them are a piece of me.

Q: What other artists do you admire?
A: I admire a lot of people who make collages or use other artistic ways to express themselves, they are a huge inspiration for me, I try to keep them and take the opportunity to follow their work closely. I’m an art lover, each art style has something I could use. There are so many good artists through history...

Thanks Serge!

Check out some of Fred Free's new work on his Flickr, I was quite taken with this collage!

I'd like to invite you to check out the new blog of Mark Boellaard from Amsterdam, called Collage Adventures. He explores some new techniques, but there are still some surrealist overtones in his current work.

Also, I was pointed in the direction of the new website of Celeste Najt, from Argentina*. She's a new find, but I love her work and I'd like to talk with her about it soon, then share it here with you!

Care to share any links in the comments to collage websites you've been visiting?

I've also created a twitter account for Notpaper, where I will post links of things I find as well as new posts, and you can share things with me!

twitter.com/notpaper

Sorry for the late notice on this one, it's hard to keep on top of shows when they're happening all the time! If you're in Dallas Texas, be sure to check out the joint collage/polaroid show with work by Matt and Mary Emma Hawthorne (a personal favourite) at Bows and Arrows.

Featuring works by Dallas artists Matt Hawthorne and Mary Emma Hawthorne On view through February 19th, 2010!

Lisa's background is interesting, she's actually a fiction writer, and started collage when dealing with some writer's block. She says her collages involve story-telling with the plot left up to the viewer—and I believe a lot of collage artists follow this approach. She creates a problem for the viewer to solve with just a few carefully selected images.

Name (Real or Screename): Lisa Eisenbrey
URL (Blog, Website): www.simpletoenchant.com
Location (Where are you from?): Austin, Texas

Q: Describe your work in 10 words or less.
A: Cut and paste irreverent narrative collage.

Q: What do you like to work with (magazines, photographs, vintage)? Be specific!
A: I’ll work with pretty much anything, but my favourite materials are old magazines and books.

Q: How long have you been creating collages and what made you start?
A: For about ten years. I'm also a fiction writer, and the collage started up at a time when I was struggling with writing. It comes from the same place. The collage work is also storytelling, only the plot is left up to the viewer.

Q: Are you solely an artist, or do you work in another profession?
A: I work in a cubicle.

Q: Do you have any formal art training?
A: I took one design class. Does that count?

Q: Explain your favourite techniques.
A: Generally I start with one object or background image and then search around to see what might "go" with it. It’s like putting together a puzzle. It almost always ends up as something completely different than whatever my initial idea might have been.

Q: Describe your favourite piece ever created.
A: My favorite is always changing. One of my current favorites is Song of the Manwich.

Q: What other artists do you admire?
A: So many. Just a few—Joseph Cornell, Robert Rauschenberg, Julie Speed, Walton Ford, and Lance Letscher.

Thanks Lisa!

Above by firebugs.

I asked Liz Cohn if I could repost this wonderfully curated news story she posted over on deviantart, and she was happy to oblige. Thanks Liz, for the great collection!

The slings and arrows of misfortune.... well arrows anyway.... (aka my love affair with St. Sebastian)

1. woefoep, 2. woefoep, 3. andrei75, 4. Px(c), 5. mbym, 6. nonsense-prophet, 7. mbym, 8. famouswhendead, 9. momax, 10. object000, 11. bayan anderson, 12. never-effects.

Original post here.

Above image by Brandi Strickland

I was snooping around on flickr today and was pointed to some lovely coincidences by Brandi Strickland. Isn't it great to see two different interpretations of the same image? Personally, I feel it doesn't happen enough—once for me, but at least twice for Brandi! Look on.

by Mary Virgina Carmack

by Brandi Strickland

by Nick Paliughi

I would love to hear if anyone else has had any similar instances!