Lori Reed‘s vibrant striated photo collages caught my eye recently, especially this one:
Lori described it thus: This 12″ x 12″ piece features a happy bee sipping his supper. I made one filtered version of the photo in Photoshop and 3 in Prisma. I cut them into irregular shapes and combined to reform the image, and added in some handmade papers, too.”
Having buzzed around the photos on her website, I knew that I wanted to show her work to a wider audience (that’s you) – and asked permission, delightfully, she granted it. So here are a few more stunning photos, together with insights from the artist herself.
In the photos above, Lori was working in a series, showing a Kayak group. The collage is composed of seven cradled panels (some .5″ deep and some 1.5″ deep) with the group measuring approx 24″H x 36″W.
When you get up close to the work, you can see quotes about boats etc – and the flowing lines of the water are broken up and blocked by strips. Like all good art, this makes you look more closely – it makes you pay attention and see.
Lori’s Technique
“Ever since a trip to western Montana in May, 2009, my artwork has had photography as its base. At first, I made several digitally altered variations of my photos (giving the images painterly, sketchy or scratched looks) and tore or cut the prints into rectangles to layer up imagery. Then one day I had the idea of running my prints through a paper shredder and building up the scene in those narrow strips of paper.
I now cut the strips by hand, allowing me more control. Sometimes I add in pieces of handmade papers, topographical maps, or fragments from old ledger books to further abstract the scene. I’m moving from a photographic documentation of a place at a particular time, to an impression of a place that is timeless … more of a memory or a feeling of the space.”
See more of Lori’s work:
We can keep up with Lori’s artworks on her Facebook page.
All new pictures appear on the Facebook page, you will also find a wide selection of her work on her website which includes an up-to-the-minute blog.
Creative Takeaway
Frequent readers of this blog know that when we feature inspiring art, there are often suggestions for how we can use the artist’s work as a starting point for a personal project.
What springs to mind is to do 2 pieces:
- a single strong motif: a still-life, a bridge, a favourite house or public building, a car, perhaps a graphic image or colour
- a group of separate repeating elements (like the kayaking picture)
Further collage
Other artists who have famously engaged with collage are Georges Braque (inventor of Cubism with Picasso) and David Hockney’s “joiners” where he began to pull together photos of the same scene from different angles, but reconstituted back into one picture.
Because I’m personally fascinated by collage, there are a few other articles on this blog in similar vein, which you might also enjoy (interpreting collage very loosely to include patchwork and stained glass):
Richard Leclerc – stained glass maker
Margaret Fabrizio – quiltmaker
Comma And 
I’m a big fan of collage, too, and I like the idea of strips 🙂 Thanks for this!