I became interested in collage not as a craft but as a theory. The idea that something whole — a self, a body of work, a love — can be assembled from pieces that were never meant for each other.
Schiaparelli understood this. Her lobster dress was not a dress and a lobster; it was both and neither. It was the space between them, the shock of the adjacency. That is where the meaning lives.
Building the Interior Life
The self is assembled the same way. We are cut and pasted. Early experiences are torn out and held against late ones to see what shape they make. Sometimes they make something coherent. Often they simply make something interesting, which is maybe better.
To live as a collage artist — to live by intention and accident both — is to accept that the gaps are part of the work. The white space around the clipping. The visible glue.
