Pop art, neosurrealism, psychedelic art, upcycling, icons for our times, a new hieroglyphics. These comprise some main aspirations of my work in collage.

In my collages I try to produce compelling arrangements of line, shape, pattern and color from images mostly derived from print media.  Through found images I play with systems and their meanings and meditate on assumed distinctions and similarities across realms: natural vs. man-made, inorganic vs. animate, art vs. science, ornamentation vs. information.

I pay homage to the innumerable windows onto the world produced by our cultural-commercial apparatus: their specificity, richness, weirdness, attractiveness; their centrality for us and for our imagination.  I am drawn to and fascinated by presentation of the world by means of charts, graphs, works of art, photographs, symbols.  I lament the price of modern civilization that this ubiquitous mediation represents, fixing on our (understandable) fixation with the beauties, glories, seductiveness and dangers of nature and consciousness.  Obliquely but pervasively, my collages communicate my strong political, environmental and spiritual concerns.  As collage represents a world of fragmentation, I endeavor to respect this reality while creating something new out of the broken shards, a kind of very personal, imagined collective scrapbook.

As much as possible I use found materials -- cutouts for images, cardboard for backing, even unwanted posters or found paintings whose surface I repurpose; producing something creative out of detritus, keeping some minuscule amount of material out of our landfills.  Recycling serves me as both an aesthetic methodology and environmental practice.  Assembled from often mass-produced matter, each work remains unique, as I eschew mechanical (and digital) production as much as possible.  I try to make my collages simultaneously simple, low-tech assemblages -- I try not to manipulate my material too much -- and also arrangements hinting through juxtaposition, allusion and restatement at ways we make meaning.

I like to play with the tensions between abstraction and figurative representation, attempting a kind of tromp-l’oeil effect, while maintaining a transparency regarding my work’s construction.  I do not want to squeeze out mystery.  Successful collages for me are colorful, attractive, inviting, playful, multi-dimensional, challenging, haunting and thought-provoking.

Some of the collages shown here are still available for sale.

The photos of collages through 2015 were taken by Stacey Natal <stacey(at)totalcitygirl.com>.  Newer collages until 2020 were photographed by Liron Leibu, who also designed this website (www.blankpagestudio.de). Photographs since then are taken by me.

Solo Shows

Gallery 505, Bronx, NY (postponed due to Covid)

Buunni Coffee, Bronx, NY (venue closed due to Covid)

Art Cafe, Nyack, NY                                                                         August 2014
Gallery 18, The Riverdale Y, Bronx, NY                                                  April 2013

Group Shows

Bronx Artists' Brunch, Tilila Casa Publica y Cocina, Bronx, NYC                July 2016

Upstart Gallery, Inwood, NYC                                                                March 2014