DAC Monthly Inspiration - June 2024 - Surrealism

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To be a surrealist means barring from your mind all remembrance of what you have seen, and being always on the lookout for what has never been.”

– Rene Magritte

“It’s the artists who do the dreaming for society.” – Meret Oppenheim

“Paintings, like dreams, have a life of their own, and I have always painted very much the way I dream.” – Leonor Fini

“What would I do without the absurd and the ephemeral?” – Frida Kahlo

Deborah Stevenson

Artist Spotlight

Artist Statement | My Collages

“I began working in paper collage in 2010. I mix classical with commercial/quotidian imagery, with the intent of creating provocative juxtapositions exploring concepts of power, the Feminine, and the mysterious. The process of making these pieces is completely different from painting, though equally labor-intensive. Whereas my paintings are derived from what I've actually observed, the collage pieces arise in an "automatic" way, presenting themselves spontaneously as I mix and move the pictures around on the table in front of me. There is no specific "goal" or intent when I begin - it's more as though I am letting the images find each other, and facilitating their communion when they "speak" to each other. More than anything else, the process requires of me that I pay attention, so as to be ready to capture the dialogue.

When I broke my wrist in late 2010, and was temporarily unable to cut and construct the paper collages, I found a new creative outlet in making panorama photo-collage pieces using my iPhone. The pieces are composed entirely "in situ." That is to say, I shoot in the sequence that you see. These are not individual photos that are pieced together after the fact on the computer or in a program like Photoshop. The app I use on my iPhone knits the images as I capture them. Again, as with the paper collages, there is a strong element of chance and serendipity at work in making these. Similarly, it is incumbent on me to stay alert and attuned to where I am and what I'm seeing, so as to best capture the moment before it is gone. As much as anything, they represent a visual diary of what interests me as I live each day.”

Q&A

In your works, you create collages from commercial and everyday imagery. What inspired you to pursue this method?

A big part of its appeal is that collage is not intimidating. All it takes is scissors, paper and glue. The materials are easily accessible and I feel fine about cutting them up. A collage can be quick and simple to compose, or it can be a complicated, complex collage that takes hours.

For me, making collage art directs my attention away from daily life, and eases me into a quiet, meditative frame of mind, which is a big part of its appeal. Cutting pictures is something I always loved doing; I find it quite soothing. The activity stills my noisy mind, and stirs my imagination. It helps me quiet my inner critic, and to let my intuition lead.

I use pictures from a variety of print media, including vintage popular magazines from mid-century America. They have a uniformity of style, distinctly of its time, that is in everything: the B&W and the color photography of that era, the pictures, the people, and the places – all of it. These are one of the sources that help me create an image that feels outside real time, and in its own separate reality.

Another great resource I use is contemporary fashion magazines. All the crazy, gorgeous, daring fashion photography knocks me out. Those images are too good not to use. I found myself being inspired to deconstruct and re-imagine them into impossible abstracted arrangements. These are some examples of what I use, and the possibilities are infinite. I have collected enough material to keep busy for many lifetimes, and I would be very happy doing that.

Q&A

Your collages often convey concepts of power, beauty, the Feminine, and mysterious archetypal conjunctions. What drew you to these themes?

These themes are all outgrowths of my life experience. I didn’t have a stable family situation. My mother was mentally ill, my father lived in another country, and I just accepted the incoherence of it as normal. I came to understand it was not. By the time I was a young adult I knew I was emotionally a mess, so I began reading as much about psychology as I could, trying to understand how to ‘fix’ myself. I found books that introduced me to the wide world of other belief systems, both cultural and spiritual. Carl Jung’s wide-ranging knowledge of mysticism and his psychological insights continue to have a profound effect on me now. They underpin much of the art I make.

We know that again and again invaders who imposed and enforced a culture based on masculine values of conquest and power eradicated ancient matriarchal cultures. We see powerful forces today that impose and enforce cultures based on masculine values of conquest and power eradicating women and the energy of the Feminine.

Art is my way to talk back to that power, by flipping it on its head as a way of challenging it. I want to make art that rejects the masculine voice from having any role in making decisions for/about me. I want to remind us that our beauty belongs to us to define. My intention in representing women in all my art is to lift women up, to defend women, to fight stereotypes, show their strengths, and to call out misogyny wherever I see it.

Now more than ever.

Q&A

How has your interest in Eastern philosophy and Jungian psychology influenced your work as an artist?

When I was little, we went to live in Tokyo. The world and ways of Japan became my framework for understanding the world.

I read Japanese children’s books, with ghost stories, flying princesses, big peaches with babies inside, and a magical turtles. In the countryside we saw ancient roadside shrines everywhere, with small monk statues with red bibs. It felt like spirit was everywhere, in everything. I felt comfortable in that environment, literally and figuratively.

In college I became fascinated with the writings of Carl Jung. His explorations into the human psyche yielded such ideas as the Collective Unconscious, psychological archetypes, and a masculine and feminine in everyone, as well as a Shadow side, and that we can talk with dream figures through ‘active imagination.’ He developed the idea what we know of as synchronicity to explain what he called ‘meaningful coincidences.’

As I grew older, I wanted to learn more about Buddhism and its emphasis on compassion and kindness. The magnificent art was entrancing, and vital for teaching and meditation. The philosophy of Buddhist felt familiar to me: we have many lives, we gain wisdom, and we practice meditation to make an auspicious birth in the next life we go to.

Jungian psychology and Buddhist philosophy ground me, and when I sit down to make a collage, they are active within me. I’m quiet inside, and open to inspiration.

Q&A

How have you seen your creative process change and evolve throughout your artistic career?

I started out painting, and kept at it for over 30 years. I had played with making collage on and off, but never as a regular habit.

When I moved and no longer had space to paint, I began making collages as my main focus. I could work at a table, and it was easy to store them. I have sat at that table with my scissors working for fifteen years now.

I cannot claim to have an artistic ‘career.’ I worked at myriad ‘straight’ jobs over all my life, and my art making was what I did when I wasn’t at my day job.

Any change in my process resulted due to that, and I adjusted to make it work.

I am 70 years old. At this stage of my life, it is gratifying to see my art get out into the world and be seen by many people, which only happened because of the internet, and social media. That in itself has been a huge change, and I evolve to keep up with it.

Q&A

Do you consider yourself a neo-Surrealist? And if so, how would you compare this revival of Surrealism to the original movement?

I hope my work would please the original Surrealists, because theirs is the standard by which I measure my work. Maybe that makes me a retro-Surrealist.

The revival of collage as a popular medium is wonderful, and has so many people making them now, all over the world. I follow many fellow collagists and am constantly impressed (and intimidated) at all the fine work I see.

I would say that, to my mind, there is nothing that has not already been done, and even better, by the original artists of the first part of the 20th century. Certainly not by me.

I am reminded of this when I look at Joseph Cornell’s boxes of wonder. I swoon looking Hannah Hoch’s collages, and I could look at Grete Stern’s photomontages forever. Then there are the paintings and the films and the sculpture that were conceived back in time. And I wonder whether we contemporary collage artists aren’t all emulating the work those who did it first. I think so, and that’s as it should be.

“

I have strong feelings and convictions about things, and this shows in my work. These feelings run deep in me and are always active in the background of my mind. They inform how I see what I see, and why I choose to make a piece.”

– Deborah Stevenson

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