Identity & Sustainability in Collage
Vintage materials add unique touches to mixed-media art, telling a story and providing texture, dimension, color, and patina. Juxtaposing antique, vintage, and repurposed materials with a modern, high-gloss resin, artists Greg Miller and Jane Maxwell reveal their artistic identities through coupling the past and the present. Manipulating their materials through a complex process of layering, Miller and Maxwell present contrasts between image and text as they reveal distinct artistry through their treatments of unconventional, up-cycled materials.
Greg Miller’s work offers a unique exploration of medium in works that combine elements of painting and collage. Traversing the boundary between sculpture, collage, and painting, Miller the primary focus on illustrative, painterly elements that are enmeshed with clippings from newspapers, magazines, and other print media. Transforming the familiarity of his materials into something new, his continued construction and deconstruction of the surface echoes the ephemerality of printed matter, and its specific, brief window into the record of our human history. Emphasizing surface quality and texture, Miller’s collage-like process establishes diversification through layered use, even incorporating American flags, books, and loose sheets of paper. Maintaining a strong narrative focus, Miller’s compositions unveil themselves as carefully curated and deeply personal.
Channeling her artistic voice that grew from a passion for vintage materials, modern fashion, and design, Jane Maxwell’s fascination for pop culture and female icons is explored throughout her collage works. Utilizing contemporary advertisements, discarded European billboards, and found paper materials to build a multi-faceted surface, Maxwell’s layered, repeated imagery creates an atmospheric effect that imbues a sense of history, time, and place into the created image.
Largely focused on women, body image, and femininity, her deeply layered work combines color, texture, and text that surround and become the female figure. Isolating and defining the figure through incisions into the layered image, the silhouettes give volume and shape to the two dimensionality of the figure, creating a beautiful contrast.