Microcosmic Message
collage artifact by J A Dixon
14 x 17 inches
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Selective Memory
mixed media collage by J A Dixon
20 x 16 inches
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Archive for the ‘Artifacts’ Category
Messages and Memories
Saturday, June 7th, 2014This artist is not coasting . . .
Wednesday, April 30th, 2014“To alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”
— Homer Simpson
Yesterday was my birthday, and I was rocked by the generosity of a fellow practitioner, Ted Tollefson. A veteran collaborator, he is also one of the more versatile individuals currently laboring in the medium. Like many collage artists, Tollefson explores a number of different approaches, but has recently established his mastery of the collage-on-beer-coaster format.
I was not fully aware until today that he has been producing a coaster-based collage for each of his facebook friends. That means hundreds of miniatures in a relatively short time frame, and, from what I can tell, he calibrates the visual method for each intended recipient. Given my expressed fondness for personal miniatures, TT is a kindred spirit indeed. He has crafted a real gem for my gift coaster. Everything about it — scale, colors, composition, textures, choice of ingredients — are simply outstanding. Thank you, sir, for your kindness. Keep up the superb effort. You are a true heir to Kurt Schwitters. Merz lives!
Take a look at just a few examples of his creative output and you might share my high regard for this mushrooming body of intriguing work.
April 29
collage on beer coaster
by T Tollefson for J A Dixon
Personal miniatures on beer coasters by Ted Tollefson.
(Hover over image for more information; click to view larger.)
March Exercise | year nine, day eighteen
Tuesday, March 18th, 2014“All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
— Samuel Beckett
I cannot lay claim to having unraveled any of the perplexities of Worstward Ho or Waiting for Godot, but Beckett’s famous quotation about perseverance rings especially true for me. There are times when I look at a collage artwork just finished and, to be honest, I am unable to tell if it is a success or a failure. However, one thing is certain — I am always one step closer to knowing. Let us keep failing better.
Fresh Catch By John
collage artifact by J A Dixon
10.5 x 9 inches
Purchase this artwork!
A Very Happy Happy!
Wednesday, January 1st, 2014
Askance
collage artifact by J A Dixon
6.5 x 9 inches
A Very Merry Merry!
Wednesday, December 25th, 2013
Cadenza Forte
Sunday, December 22nd, 2013“Once you establish yourself as an artist, heaven forbid you change the formula too much. Paradoxically, this goes even for artists who ‘broke molds’ on the way up. The German powerhouse painter Gerhard Richter has gotten away with working in many different styles. But the case of 20th-century French chameleon Francis Picabia is a warning. He’s been dead since 1953, and he’s still paying for the fact that his art didn’t look the same from decade to decade.”
— Jen Graves
Pre-Christmas sales have accelerated, and there is enough time for local folks to surprise someone with a collage miniature under the tree. Cadenza Forte found a home after six and a half years. The buyer said he wanted an example of my “classic style.”
Hmmm… I need to turn that over in my mind for a bit.
Cadenza Forte
collage artifact by J A Dixon
16 x 20 inches
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Fallen Body
Monday, June 24th, 2013“Less is not necessarily more.”
— Milton Glaser
A profusion of collage artwork has recently come to my attention that makes use of only two or three elements. When this type of minimalist approach is successful, the result can be quite arresting to the eye and mind. More often than not, it looks uninteresting or unfinished to me. It may come as no surprise that I am more of a maximalist, preferring to build a layering of ingredients that transcends the intrinsic quality of the found material. I suppose that I have been more influenced by Schwitters than Cornell. Although there is nothing inherently unappealing to me about “sparsity,” admiring those who employ the methodology with skill, I have found myself pulled toward “density’ for the past few years. Some artists may think that if one hasn’t achieved a solution with fewer than a dozen parts, the essence of the piece has escaped. I appreciate that viewpoint, and respect those who consistently meet the challenge of limitation. For me, the working surface calls out for more, until a balance of “visual polyphony” takes form, and the dynamic aspects of color, shape, composition, and symbolic communication have resolved themselves as a distinctive, unified whole.
Fallen Body
collage artifact by J A Dixon
7.5 x 10.5 inches
available for purchase
Star of Abraham
Monday, February 18th, 2013“However long and varied the background of pasted materials in folk art, none of these developments was considered a major artistic movement. It was the creative artists of the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who applied materials as a new and valid means of expression. With these artists and their work the word ‘collage’ was first applied and became associated with the movement. Thus was born an art form that has become part of the contemporary milieu and, indelibly, a major historical art movement.”
— Dona Z Meilach and Elvie Ten Hoor
My wife and I recently went to see Lincoln, the Spielberg picture with Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role. It got me thinking again about the work I created for the bicentennial of the 16th president’s birth, the celebration of which was a fairly big deal here in his native state. I had made the decision to exploit the bulk of my collected Lincoln images to totally cover a metal star. To produce a collage tribute to the martyred leader with a folk-art approach seemed to me a technique appropriate to the occasion. The “artifact” is still waiting for a home. Happy Presidents Day to all.
Star of Abraham
collage artifact by J A Dixon
22 x 22 inches
Unconditional Surrender
Saturday, September 29th, 2012“To say that Kurt Schwitters was an amazingly versatile artist and anticipated much is such an absurd understatement that the remark is almost Dada.”
—Walter Hopps
“And so you will understand why we have had enough of Dada. The mirror that indignantly rejects your worthy countenance, that in mirroring it banishes it, such a mirror does not love you, it is in love with the very opposite.”
—Kurt Schwitters
To perpetually imitate KS is to be as unlike him as one could conceive. He was always pushing forward into the untried. But it is not for every artist to cross a boundary into the unknown. Some of us might be better suited to settling the frontier. There may be some among us more appropriately equipped to continue investigating the discoveries of a pioneering original— by sharing these visual concepts with a broader audience, by weaving them into a greater tapestry of the visual landscape, and, with a bit of luck, by finding a way to fuse our unique perspective with what has been handed off to us, in order to express new ideas that further cultivate a valuation of the past.
I am not an expert on Dada or the relationship of Schwitters with the phenomenon. I am always learning more. I just know that he was never fully accepted by the movement at its peak, and that he was compelled to articulate his own vision of Merz. Perhaps much of it relates to Fascist oppression and the resulting geographic disruption, but I’ve always believed there was more to it than that. More important to me is an ongoing effort to unravel the underlying differences. A certain veneration for painting, design, and the aesthetics of beauty probably set KS apart from some of his rejectionist or surrealist contemporaries, but that is what gives his creations a unique, seminal power for me and for others. His perseverance in the face of daunting circumstances and a professed goal of “creating relationships, preferably between all things in the world” fly in the face of a nihilist orientation. Although I remain awed by surrealism in collage, and I am as tickled by irreverent juxtapositions as the next guy, there is an inherent pessimism or metaphysical anarchy in the “art of weirdness” that never seems to resonate with my deepest creative urge. I cannot say that I fully understand that, or that I am not occasionally moved to place a fish head on a reclining nude or mask a face with a front-loading washer. Is it even productive for me to engage in such self-analysis? Or, is it important only to submit to the most undeniable inner motivations when in the studio, sorting through another pile of visual fragments that await an intuitive response?
Unconditional Surrender
collage artifact by J A Dixon
collection of Nancy and Charles Martindale
Structural Integrity
Friday, September 7th, 2012“Though he was not connected with any political party, his art was regularly vilified as a threat to traditional German values, while he himself was denounced as ‘unpatriotic’ or, just as often, insane. Yet Schwitters thrived on public opposition, and from 1919 to 1923 he created a succession of Merz pictures which are now seen as his greatest contribution to twentieth century art. These pictures carry an inner tension that derives from the sensitive juxtaposition of abstraction and realism, aesthetics and rubbish, art and life, and their innate dynamism is one of the characteristics of Merz.”
— Gwendolen Webster
Today’s featured collage, inspired by some of the superlative work being done by my friends during this centennial year for the medium, is a bit larger than my typical miniature. To produce an “artifact,” I began with the cover of a ruined book, and before long I realized I had a strictly nonrepresentational composition on my hands. Created spontaneously at a close viewing distance, it wasn’t until I stepped back after completion that it brought to mind the kind of image one might view from the window of an upper story, looking across an urban landscape, with light and shadow playing off facades and roof lines. The way in which the mind attempts to unravel layers of symbolic meaning from the purely abstract is endlessly intriguing to me.
Those of us who create art within this particular genre are indebted to the increasingly exalted legacy of Kurt Schwitters and his original conception of Merz. I often think about how we have been liberated to explore the inexhaustible potential of this approach and to disclose our aesthetic vision within the accepted playground of modern art. Never forget that the man who fully defined this visual language for us did so at genuine risk to his personal freedom and safety. We may not always describe our works as a tribute to the enduring idea of Merz, but that is precisely what they are. Schwitters said, “Merz means creating relationships, preferably between all things in the world.” One fine aspect of that is the new connections and friendships that grow out of mutual interest in collage during its one-hundredth year. Check out the online galleries of Launa D Romoff, Teri Dryden, Scott Gordon, and Joan Schulze. You may agree with me that these artists are among today’s “Heirs to KS.” I hope to discover many more and to share their creative output at this site. Please stop by again soon.
Structural Integrity
collage artifact by J A Dixon
8 x 10.5 inches
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