Collage Issue by Panhandler Magazine

Panhandler Poetry - Fiction - Nonfiction - Drama - Criticism - Interviews - Art

Panhandler poetry - fiction - nonfiction - drama - criticism - interviews - art

Collage Issue Guest Edited by Duncan Stewart and James Caudle

Duncan Stewart /4-7 Steve Lautermilch /8-17 Robert Fichter /18-22 Marty Gordon /23-35 James Caudle /36-54 Mik Kastner /55-60 Tim Manthey /61-68 Tara Thomas /69-79 Jack Nichelson /80-86 Editor: Jonathan Fink Art Editor: Valerie George Managing Editors: Brooke Hardy, Doug Moon, Ashley Clark www.uwf.edu/panhandler. Panhandler (ISSN 0738-8705) is published by the University of West Floridaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Department of English and Foreign Languages.

Duncan Stewart Duncan Stewart received his BFA and MFA from San Diego State University in 1969. His teaching career began at the University of West Florida Art Department and lasted for the next 35 years, retiring in 2004. During this time, he also taught with the Semester at Sea program and at Cambridge. Duncan traveled extensively living and teaching in Europe. Over the years, he has exhibited in numerous one person, regional, national and competitive exhibitions. Most recently, his exhibitions include a retrospective in 2009 and one person shows at Artel Gallery and Axis Mundi Gallery. DUNCAN STEWART WRITES: These images are from a series titled â&#x20AC;&#x153;1000 Poems.â&#x20AC;? This is a series of 1000 collages. The series was started and finished a number of years ago, there are now about 650 left. I see the images as individual words, phrases or stanzas that can be arranged and re-arranged each time they are shown so that the poem changes. The collages themselves are seen as a kind of visual evidence, selected from piles of personal printed material, glued onto a kind of manila toe tag card and put into the sort of plastic bag that could be used for evidence.

Steve Lautermilch Steve Lautermilch’s new photographs are hanging in three area exhibitions: two photographs in Elizabeth City, and two in galleries in Nags Head and Manteo. One of the images in Elizabeth City’s Arts of the Albemarle Gallery, a color photograph of an old barn on a back road, titled “Sundown 1/1/10,” received an honorable mention. His new photographs also appear or have appeared as covers for and images inside CrossCurrents, A Poets [sic] Guide to the Birds, North Carolina Conversations, Off the Coast, and George Perreault’s All the Verbs of Knowing from Black Rock Press at the University of Nevada, Reno. His new and recent poems are appearing in CrossCurrents, Off the Coast, Prairie Schooner, and Southern Poetry Review. Rim, a new chapbook of poems, won the 2010 Sow’s Ear Poetry Press competition and will be published by the end of the month.

Atlantis

Natchez moon

Mojave topo

Owl with spirit helper & atlatl, Columbia River Gorge

Sheep skull, Joshua Tree

Serpentine

Trace, Death Valley

Tortoise shell with missing shields

Wind horse on rusted cooking sheet

Tree with moon & two shells

Window curtain, Foxfire Cabin, Hambidge Center

Shell, pocket watch & crushed paper

Robert Fichter Robert Fichter studied with Hank Heuler, Henry Holmes Smith, Jerry Uelsmann, Ken Keslake, and James McGarrell. After completing his MFA at Indiana University, he worked for Nathan Lyons at the George Eastman House Museum of Photography. Robert Heinecken lured him to Los Angeles to teach in the art department at UCLA. When Evon Streetman asked him to start a graduate program in photograph in the Florida State University art program, he went to FSU in 1972 where he stayed until 2006 when he retired to become a FTA (Full Time Artist). He curated a number of exhibitions over the years, such as Colors, an exhibition of ten photographic image-makers. A limited edition portfolio was produced with work from each artist which was funded by the National Endowment of the Arts. It opened at the Florida State University Art Gallery in 1975. In 1973, for the Florida State Art Museum, he also curated Photophantists: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary Photography. His art was shown in one person shows and group shows national. A one person exhibition, Robert Fichter: Photography and Other Questions, was originated by the International Museum of Photography, Rochester, New York and curated by Robert Sobieszek. It opened on Dec. 15, 1982 and traveled nationally. Robert is currently Co-Director of the Lillian E. Smith Center, an artists retreat in North Georgia – www.lillianesmith.org. More of his work can be seen at www.rwfwfd.net. ROBERT FICHTER WRITES: As a floundering, perpetual student at the University of Florida in the early 1960’s, I was thrown a life line by Jerry Uelsmann, who introduced me to using a camera and to it’s magic ability to reframe the world all the while constantly announcing that he was concerned with the “human condition.” I took that as my own mantra, working against the teaching of my older sister (the real artist in the family) to push and pull colors only, and took the Narrative Express to try and stretch the limits of photography all the while drawing and painting as I went. I called myself an Experimentalist in my early days. Today I would say I am a prototypist using collage as a working method to correct and expand my renderings of a world sliding into the chaos of over consumption and fear.

Hurricane Signal

Jonah 20

Lassie Puzzle Piece, Bones to Baby Gene Pool, “It’s Just like life flashing before your eyes.”

Space Heater

Marty Gordon Marty Gordon draws on a diverse artistic background that includes writing, theater, and printmaking to make his clever collages. A former minister, Gordon now devotes his spare time to collage making. Blending sophisticated humor with a comic visual style, he has developed his own unique genre of collage. Gordon lives in Seattle, Washington, with his wife, Sarah, who is also an artist and costume designer. He has exhibited his art nationally and internationally and is one of 40 artists featured in the recent publication Masters: Collage. You can see more of his work at his website: www.whatwouldjesusglue.com. MARTY GORDON WRITES: At first glance, my art appears lighthearted and comical with clever wordplay and allusions to comic books. Scratch the surface and you will find much more. Several years ago, a friend challenged me to use my art as a sounding board for my thoughts and feelings. Since then, my art has become a forum for asking questions, inviting debate, and telling stories. I use it to explore the struggles I have with spirituality, religious faith, politics, culture and everyday life. In short, looking at one of my collages is like peeking through a window into another world â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a place where art, humor, faith, tension, and candidness all harmoniously coexist.

A Day at the Beach

Catholics in Space

Catnip Voracity and the Carnage Cat Girls

Creationism vs Evolution Museum and Petting Zoo

Cured Bacon

Escape from the Planet of the Sea Monkeys

Giant Jesus vs San Francisco

Hypno-Monkey Strikes Again

King O Kings

Lost in Space

Re-Entry

Monkey Goes to Heaven

That Old Time Religion

The Brainwashing of Suzy Homemaker

The Call of Nature

The Training of Bras

Transfiguration

Waffles from Heaven

The Walt Vault

The Inner Chimp

James Caudle James Caudle spent his childhood and early adult life growing up in the South, which instilled in him a love of story telling and the Folk Art traditions. He spent several years learning techniques and searching for what it was that inspired him before taking a collage class; he has been cutting out little pieces of paper and gluing them to larger pieces of paper ever since. In early 2001, he migrated from the South to the Golden Land of California seeking a new life but unfortunately, abandoning his art with the exception of a series of journals, which he continues to this day. He eventually ended up in Seattle where the collages and even a few paintings began bleeding out of his journals and onto the canvas. Several years ago, at the urging of a friend, he had a small show, the first in a number of years, revitalizing him and focusing his attentions on his art once again. He began to bring in those techniques learned long ago and to start pushing the sizes of his works outward again. JAMES CAUDLE WRITES: My Series of playing cards began with my larger painting “Jack of Hearts,” an epic tale of love, betrayal, loss, and possible redemption. Everyone asked if I planned to create the entire deck and I told them they were crazy. Cut to two months later and I realized that I had the Queen of Hearts, Queen of Clubs, and the beginnings of the Queen of Diamonds, and the Queen and Ace of Spades. Everyone seemed to like this direction so I jumped right in. The historical playing card evolved as its use spread from the East and crossed Europe with the modern day versions first surfacing in what would become Germany, Italy, and France with the French versions incorporating elements of the German and Latin suits.These developed over the centuries to the familier Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, and Spades with the identities of the face value cards being assigned to historical figures. King of Spades - David King of Hearts - Charlemange King of Diamonds – Julius Caesar King of Clubs – Alexander the Great Queen of Spades - Pallas Queen of Hearts - Judith Queen of Diamonds - Rachel Queen of Clubs – Argeia Knave of Spades - Holger Danske Knave of Hearts – La Hire Knave of Diamonds - Hector Knave of Clubs – Lancelot I started working within this framework but allowed myself the freedom to make the variations noted with each work. www.caudledmilk.com

Ace of Spades

King of Spades (David)

Queen of Spades (Pallas)

Knave of Spades (Holger Danske)

Ace of Diamonds

King of Diamonds (Julius Caesar)

Queen of Diamonds (Rachel)

Knave of Diamonds (Hector)

Ace of Hearts

King of Hearts (Charlemagne)

Queen of Hearts (Judith)

Knave of Hearts (La Hire)

Ace of Clubs

King of Clubs (Alexander the Great)

Queen of Clubs (Argine)

Knave of Clubs (Lancelot)

Joker (Hi)

Joker (Low)

Mik Kastner Mik Kastner is an artist based in Louisiana. In 2010 he received a Masters of Fine Arts degree from The Department of Art and Technology Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work crosses the boundaries of sculpture, installation, bioart and digital media. His aim as an artist is to create propositional systems of visual engagement through the use of multiple medias that challenge the viewer to generate new narratives for highly unusual scenarios. Through these systems, he poetically explores the relational constructs between the organic and inorganic, reality and artificial reality, and permanence and the ephemeral as developmental metaphors. MIK KASTNER WRITES: I documented this series of collages using a microscope set at 30x zoom. This technique made the outcome closer to a photograph than a collage. In light of this I still consider them collages, as that was my starting point. Unlike traditional collages which are documented as a whole, I had to create the collage and then explore them to find the part of the collage that I wanted to show in the documentation. The final image the collage took was not realized until this exploration occurred. In a sense, I waited until the collage was revealed to me and then documented it. This process became more like taking pictures of a set or an assemblage. Using an LED as a light source, I lit these small sets to invoke a dramatic feel to the images. The underlying images were all taken from w magazine, most were from their seen column that showcased photos of celebrities taken at various social functions. These images became the backgrounds for the collages. In some of the collages I added gel pills to the surfaces and illuminated them. For others I glued the celebrity images to the bottom of petri dishes and poured nutrient rich agar over them which allowed mold and bacteria to grow on the surface. I wanted the collages to have a non-representational quality that would border on reality and abstraction. Not revealing the source of the images was one important aspect to my decision making process. Natural elements were used to overlap the artificialness of the magazine images.

Baby Gap

Katie

Kanye

Pill

Winslett Moldy Eye

Tim Manthey Born in Seattle in the late seventies, Tim Manthey has been creating strange visual art for over thirty years. During high school he began a lifelong sketch-journal to record experiences and sketch weird visions in pen and ink, which continues to this day. In 2000, Tim produced a series of lo-fi surreal video collages for public access television, which would become the inspiration for later artistic endeavors. In 2009, he picked up a pair of scissors and a stack of vintage magazines rescued from a library dumpster, and was struck with the urge to create handmade collages. The collages quickly evolved into a series of whimsically disturbing dream narratives, which Tim began to show at different venues around Seattle. His collage work has since been featured on the cover of The Stranger, Design-milk, FFFFOUND!, Scrapiteria, The Drawgasmic Exhibition, and will be featured in the book Modern Vintage Illustration in 2012. Tim continues to create artwork on a continual basis, updating his blog weekly with new images, doing commissioned pieces, and hanging shows in Seattle. TIM MANTHEY WRITES: Collage, as an artistic medium, is for me the most effective means to convey my interpretation of the relationships in the physical world, and to engage what runs below the surface of the collective human psyche. The art that inspires me most can be described as surreal and psychedelic, as in allowing human thought patterns to play with how the universe “ties together,” and the potentiality of interrelationship. I draw heavily upon nature imagery and the subconscious influences of my own childhood: vintage television media, advertisement, album art and the assumed “normal” western culture of mid to late 20th century. This world that was presented as conventional and static can now be seen as ridiculous and disturbing when recontextualized today in a psychedelic context. Humor, scientific thought, fantasy and religion find their way into my pieces subconsciously, as I assemble images toward a final graphic composition. All of my collages are handmade with scissors, paint and glue. They are finalized with minimal to no digital manipulation. For me, working within these limits opens the door to unexpected potentials. I utilize shapes and patterns from the unseen realms of microcosm and macrocosm. Outer space, aquatic life, and microscopic photography are beautiful, effective stage-setters for the narratives I present. Themes tend toward the outlandish. Often illustrating tension and impending interactions between strange characters. Playful multi-tasking is an vital part of how I work. There are always a number of collages in progress at my workspace, waiting to “click together”sometimes by happy accident and come to life. “Witnessing” this is what keeps me working on a continual basis. It is my desire push the medium of collage in expansive directions, and to see my work and the collage work of others evolve and be utilized in new formats within modern culture.

Acrophobia 62

Electric Wool 63

Heavens to Betsy

Honeyride 65

Map Feeders

MindBodySpirit 67

Seal the Deal

Tara Thomas Tara Thomas is like a funhouse mirror. Using magazines, found photographs, and personal ephemera, she dissects and reconfigures ordinary images into new archetypes that both frighten and tickle the senses. Her collages are truly the mutant children of our popular culture— the “special needs” versions of our mimetic symbols and icons. Over the last decade, Tara has created more than fifty “scrapbook” collections of her work, which have appeared in exhibitions in Seattle. Tara is also a painter and filmmaker, and is currently working on one of several autobiographies.

Bunny 76

Ice T 77

McDonalds 78

Pee-Wee 79

Jack Nichelson “Jack Nichelson (American, b. 1934) has been creating intricate and ecocative “box environments” for nearly fifty years. Part construction, part, assemblage, his sculptures of wood, paint and mixed media have included series on war, toy transport and Japanese culture. Sojourner Dream Reliquaries, Nichelson’s latest series, represents the culmination of his long-standing fascination with the visual presence of religious reliquaries. The subject first captured Nichelson’s attention following a summer in Europe in 1962. Afterwards, he began constructing small reliquary-sized church forms with secular objects in the interiors. Begun in 2000, Nichelson’s Sojourner Dream Reliquaries includes twenty-two sculptures inspired by travel trailers from the late 1920s to the early 1950s. These replicate basic trailer forms of the period, such as the “pop-up,” “canned ham,” and “bread box.” Both the compact sizes and shapes of the trailers lend themselves to the secular reliquary concept. The exteriors are enhanced with color enamels and gold, bronze and sliver in various textres and some of the roofs incorporate unusual surfaces such as snakeskin and birch bark. One additional work, a trailer park office building, completes the series. The lighted interior of each trailer is unique and includes multiple viewing angles that encourage viewers to look closely at the rich array of objects drawn from Nichelson’s collection of antique toys, tourist souvenirs and trinkets. The fascinating assemblage of objects produces a dream-like quality that addresses wideranging social issues. Examples include civil rights, corporate greed, global warming, war and terrorism, and the repatriation of sacred relics. Completed over a nine-year period, the Sojourner Dream Reliquaries series has never before been exhibited in its entirety.” – Dulce Maria Roman, Curator of Modern Art (from the Harn Museum of Art show, Gainesville, FL. June 22, 2010 - January 2, 2011) JACK NICHELSON WRITES: I have been involved in mixed media constructions (with interior lights) since 1961. Found objects and images have always been involved. I’ve also worked at various times on individual series of collages based on a theme (as in the Japan series). I don’t own a computer. I want to work with my hands as long as I am able. I work mostly with cut and paste photomontage in an abstract manner.

A Day of Spring: A Hamlet Where Not Anyone Is Doing Anything (19th Century haiku by Masaoka Shiki)

Future Perfect: The Noh and Go Tableaux

Offscreen Feeding Frenzy

Global Warming: The Last Incense Delivery in Venice

Must Win: The Samurai Reliquary

The Red Dragon: More Than Games of Chance

Duncan Stewart Steve Lautermilch Robert Fichter Marty Gordon James Caudle Mik Kastner Tim Manthey Tara Thomas Jack Nichelson