photo by Matthew Casey

This is a new Aerial Dream collage (almost all glued) made with Chagall's Over the Town in mind. I use removable double-stick tape to keep pieces in place while I am working/composing. 

I glue my collages with non-toxic wheat and rice pastes on cotton acid-free paper that is stretched onto boards. The boards have frames on the back so they can be stacked to save space, allowing me to work on multiple collages at a time. When completed, I remove the collage and reuse the boards. 

Eleanor Roosevelt's Dress
mixed media collage: magazines, paper, text in black pencil
9.5" x 10"

This actually is Eleanor Roosevelt's dress. The writing in the folds is one of her famous quotes: "You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

Kabuki Flyer
mixed media collage: magazines on inked paper
9.25" x 7.75"

first publication: Shakespeare's Monkey Revue, Vol 2, Issue 3

Kabuki Flyer is like a commingle of kabuki with anime. She might be a super femme girl warrior zooming off to seek vengeance or else to maintain peace.

Bird–Woman
collage: magazines, rice papers, poem in black pencil, 8.5" x 11"
(please click on image to enlarge)

Poem written inside skirt and wing:

I am bird-woman
both pretend and real
beak made of lips
claws of feet

words are my wings
when I fly away
my twin hearts beat
more than presience

She Rises
photomontage on paper, 7.25" x 6.75"

explanation to him

this creature with a half eggshell head
is not a barren womb, emptied of eggs
or unfertile eggs
she is not empty, not death and not not loving

seeds blow everywhere
odd things combine
she is cobwebs and trash in the corner of a room
a nest, composting peels and rinds, a torn bit of cloth
all blown together

somehow she manages to fly

Wing Keeper
photomontage on paper, 11" x 8.5"

Aerial Desire
collage: magazines, papers, ink, white pencil on paper, 11" x 8.5

first published in Woman Made Gallery, Her Mark 2008

how to silence rulers

to make a collage
with right angles
that fit into a frame

measure carefully as sides
expand and contract
with hungry

middles whose mouths
eat feet

try to count how many
cross the sky

inches lose
track of the years
since you or I
climbed a tree

paper crumples
shadow of hand
over a crooked smile

there's only
a scissor edge
between us

Offering
collage: magazines on black paper, 11" x 8.5"

Witness
collage: magazines and black paper, 10" x 8 1/4"

Shadowfly
collage: magazines and black paper

look into the web
collage: magazines and paper (please click for larger version)

collage: sheet music, magazines, colored paper, 6" x 5"

The Egg

Her brother dared to say he loved me.
She spit on him,
I'm not leaving you a thing!
She hated my pale skin.

The night she died
I dreamed she gave me an egg.
It felt hardboiled;
I was about to peel the shell
and take a bite
when she demanded it back.

I threw the egg at her.
Years of rage splattered
down her face

distorted with the pain
of her nest egg sucked empty
by her own lover, the one man
she had trusted.

I Am Not Guilty

photomontage, 7 3/4" x 8 1/4"

I keep a notebook with quick starts of collages using non-permanent double-stick tape. (I highly recommend this type of visual journaling.) Those hands held the brick wall for a long while until I decided to work on it. The rest came together in that happy accident way. 

Flying Metaphorically: Under the Rooster

collage: magazines, joss paper, metallic watercolor on rice paper on mirror
12" x 12"

Hours of Night
collage: magazines, metallic watercolor
9 1/2" x 9 1/4"

"Hours of the Night" refers to ancient Egyptian mythology, concerning the realm they believed everyone entered during sleep and at death. I imagine she looks back toward her earthly existence. The split Ba-butterfly and small birds might be her soul departing.

Car Nymph

photomontage: magazines, 10.5" x 8.25"

in the wind of a sneeze

collage: magazines, colored pencil, metallic watercolor, screening,
rice papers, 8 1/2" x 8 3/8"


in the wind of a sneeze

i wanted to build a house
the way ants do
hauling tiny crumbs
four times their own size
its brick walls would stack neatly

i wanted people inside
but didn't plan on a naked man
and a girl floating
as if to escape

my scissors took over
irregular rectangles fell
bricks sailed
into dizzying alignments
and windows flew away
on the wings of black birds


collage and poem first printed in Mannequin Envy