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Kolaj LIVE Online is a series of virtual programs in the form of forums, panels, workshops, artist talks, studio visits, and other activities that allow people to come together, learn and talk about collage, and connect in real time to the collage community. Our goal is to bring the community together in a spirit of mutual support and fellowship. The series began in July 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This page is an archive of PAST EVENTS and PAST ACTIVITIES.
Past Events
PRINT JOURNAL LAUNCH
PoetryXCollage
On Thursday, August 11th, 2022, Kolaj Institute and several of the contributing artists— Anthony D Kelly (Castle Bar, Co. Mayo, Ireland), Carla E Reyes (Astoria, NY, USA), Cathy Greenhalgh (London, England, United Kingdom), Cheryl Chudyk (Kirkland, WA, USA), Janice McDonald (Denver, CO, USA), Jennifer Roche (Chicago, IL, USA), Samantha Brown (Blackrock, Co. Louth, Ireland), Thomas Mayer (Berlin, Germany)—gathered for a discussion about the Poetry & Collage Residency, their artwork, and the intersection of collage and poetry. Artists shareed images of their work and read their poetry.
In January 2022, we issued a call to artists for a Poetry & Collage Residency and received so many excellent responses that we organized a series of three residencies. The artists heard from guest speakers Kevin Sampsell, Renée Reizman, Rod T. Boyer, and the Poetry Foundation's Fred Sasaki and were challenged to create page spreads to be included in a forthcoming book of collage and poetry.
In the residency, we challenged artists to move beyond taxonomical debates. Ric Kasini Kadour said, "What is a poem? We do not need to have a singular answer to that question. Individually we must each answer that question for ourselves. In practice, every poem we make will be an example of what a poem is. In considering other people's work, we should ask ourselves, How is this a poem?" During the residencies, artists interrogated each other's artwork, collaborated, and shared ideas. And at the end of it, they sent us more page spreads than could fit into a single book. Impressed and moved by the volume and quality of cultural output and a deep belief that this practice--however you want to describe it--at the intersection of collage and poetry deserves a platform, we decided to create a new journal dedicated to it. Christopher Kurts named it PoetryXCollage and said, “How do you pronounce it? You can say the letter ‘X’ or it can stand for the words ‘and,’ ‘in collaboration with,’ or ‘featuring.’ The X is an intersection, a crossroads, or an equation. X marks the spot.”
BOOK & EXHIBITION LAUNCH
Politics in Collage
Collage as a political art form has a particular relevance to today as well as a strong historical context. From its roots in the European anti-facist and Russian revolutionary movements in the early 20th century to its expressions during the U.S. Civil Rights era to its current manifestations in the fight for social justice in South America, collage is used by artists around the world as an impetus for social and political change. Kolaj Magazine has reported on how collage was used to visualize the 2019-2021 Estallido Social in Chile which incidentally birthed a new collage community. In Fall 2021, Kolaj Institute organized a series of residencies in which artists explored the intersection of politics and collage. Led by G.E. Vogt, the residencies produced a collection of artworks that debuted at Kolaj Fest New Orleans in 2022 as an exhibition at The Domino. In July 2022, Kolaj Institute released Politics in Collage, a book of artwork, and an Online Exhibition.
Sunday, July 31st, 2022, G.E Vogt, and four of the exhibiting artists—Phyllis Famiglietti (Massachusetts, USA), Gayathiri Kamalakanthan (England, United Kingdom), Penny Mateer (Pennsylvania, USA), and Amanda Lynch (England, United Kingdom)—discussed their experience of the Politics in Collage residency, their artwork, and the need for more complex works engaged in political dialogue.
FORUM
Oh, Money! Money! Book Launch
On Sunday, August 22nd 2021, 2PM EDT (1800 UTC), several artists who took part in the Money Money Collage Residency will talk about their experiences collaboratively illustrating a hundred year old book within the span of a month. “The Money Money Collage Residency was an exhilarating experience embracing virtual collaboration to make analog and digital collages to illustrate a story,” writes Susan Silva. Mary Johnson writes “This residency gave me time and space, as well as direction, to breathe new life into my practice and relationship with collage. I learned quite a bit from both the lectures and my fellow resident artists: working with imagery in direct response to a text, and strengthening my digital skills. Additionally, our discussions as a group regarding our culture’s response to money, late stage capitalism and commercialism gave me quite a bit of food for thought. The residency has actually inspired a few new projects in my own practice. “I think the residency was a unique reimagining of what artistic community means in the globalized, virtualized, pandemic present,” writes Elijah Guerra. “On the surface, we collaborated to interpret and illustrate a novel, but beneath the surface, we reconfigured the layers of our individual and collective processes of creativity. We collaged each other into a cohesive and sometimes chaotic set of images, a self-portrait of the residency.” mateo desant succinctly sums up the residency as “Zoom, money, collage, Slack, repeat.” At this lively virtual forum, artists discussed some of the collages in the book and spoke about their experience of collaborative illustration.
COLLAGE TOPIC
The Parent Trap: How to Be an Artist with Kids
Sunday, June 27th 2021. In her 2018 book, “A Big Important Art Book - Now with Women!,” Danielle Krysa tells a number of stories about how artists who negotiate being a mother and working their art practice. Spoiler alert, It's not easy. In this Kolaj LIVE Online forum, Krysa joined four additional panelists and speak about how they negotiate parenthood, specifically the challenges of being an artist and raising children. Wylie Garcia spoke about managing creative time with young children, ways to stay engaged in one's practice, finding time to make art, and how to incorporate it into the daily routine, without feeling guilty. Cheryl Chudyk spoke about feeling like an outsider among both her childless colleagues in art and other non-artist parents, not quite fitting in with either. Ben DiNino spoke to being a stay at home parent and how he has adapted his process to be more flexible with both the time and energy available to him. Teresa Cribelli spoke about how parenting sets strict parameters around each daily schedule.
VIRTUAL OPENING
The Money $how Curator's Talk
At Saint Kate – The Arts Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, 10 April-10 August 2021, The Money $how takes guests on a tour of late-stage capitalism. Each artist in the exhibition uses collage to unpack ideas about money and its influence on our culture. Artworks speak about Black wealth, immigrant remittances, and how mid-20th century advertising informs present-day attitudes. Artists collage dollar bills into flowers and mine material remnants to tell stories about home economics. On Saturday, April 17, 2021, Co-curators of The Money $how Frank Juarez, the publisher of Artdose Magazine, and Ric Kasini Kadour, the editor of Kolaj Magazine hosted an opening talk.
Watch the Event
If the video doesn't appear, you can watch it HERE.
COLLAGE EVENT
How-To World Collage Day
Saturday, February 20, 2021. World Collage Day is an annual, international celebration of collage on the Second Saturday of May. In this event, Ric Kasini Kadour shared the impetus for the day's creation and it’s philosophy. He was joined by artists who shared their experience of past World Collage Day events: Celia Crane, an analog collage artist and writer based in Rochester, New York shared her celebration of World Collage Day 2020, when she reappropriated an 8’x8’ garden shed to create Rochester’s first dedicated collage gallery. For World Collage Day 2018, COUPEE Collage Collective invited 24 Belgian contemporary collage artists to turn the beautiful antique telephone booths at the Brussels railway station into small art galleries. The response from artists and visitors was overwhelming, so they decided to turn their occasional activities into a more professional platform, which became the COUPEE Collage Collective. Bram Antheunis shared his experience of the event. Suzanne Winkel founded the Arizona Collage Collective in September 2019, with the help of a few others. For World Collage Day 2020, they mailed over two hundred packets of paper cutouts and ephemera to collage artists around the world and posted the resulting collages on their Instagram. An article about her experience appeared in Kolaj #31. Christopher Kurts is the coordinator of Kolaj Institute and the co-founder of the Mystic Krewe of Scissors and Glue, a collage community in New Orleans. For World Collage Day 2019, the collage krewe joined up with Whole Village Art Therapy to produce an all ages collage making event. At the event, we announced the World Collage Day Poster Artist: Red Collage, a Colombian collective founded in 2017 that works to open up and broaden the scope of collage through exhibitions, workshops, meet-ups, and a collage club in Bogota.
Watch the Event
If the video doesn't appear, you can watch it HERE.
COLLAGE ARTISTS
Celebrating Women Past & Present: The Collage Art of Jann Haworth & Liberty Blake
Saturday, January 16th, 2020. Jann Haworth was a leading figure in the British Pop Art scene of the 1960s when the Beatles asked her and her then-husband, Peter Blake, to make the album cover for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which won four Grammys in 1967. The cover became one of the most famous album covers of all time. Over time, Haworth came to see a problem. Of the seventy-five luminaries in the collage, only twelve were women. In 2016, Haworth teamed up with her daughter, collage artist Liberty Blake, to make The Work in Progress mural to correct the oversight. A community-driven effort, Haworth and Blake created workshops that taught people how to turn a photograph into a stencil. The women in the mural span time and geography. The iconic image of Rosa Parks holding her arrest number stands between Cleopatra and Queen Elizabeth I. Princess Diana peeks over the shoulder of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Celebrities mingle with scientists and mathematicians. Yayoi Kusama appears in her polka dot dress. An article about the mural appears in Kolaj #31. In this virtual event, Kolaj Magazine Editor Ric Kasini Kadour interviewed Haworth & Blake about The Work in Progress mural; collage's role in the British Pop Art scene of the 1960s; making art as a mother-daughter team; and how art can teach us and help us remember our history.
COLLAGE FORUM
How-To Kolaj
Sunday, December 6, 2020. At Kolaj Magazine, we are often asked by artists how to be featured in the magazine or how to list an exhibition or how to get a book listed on Collage Books. In this forum, Editor and Publisher of Kolaj Magazine Ric Kasini Kadour walked attendees through the various ways in which one can both submit to the magazine and be featured. Kadour offered a brief presentation, after which he took questions about the magazine, upcoming events, and various initiatives and projects.
Watch the Event
If the video doesn't appear, you can watch it HERE.
COLLAGE FORUM
Collage Communities Forum
Saturday, November 21, 2020. Collage is unique in the larger art world in that communities and collectives play an important role in the production and promotion of the art form. Collage groups organize exhibitions, run online calls to artists, facilitate exchange across borders. In this virtual forum, leaders of collage communities in North America, Europe, and Latin America shared their experience bringing artists and collage enthusiasts together.
Image by Lisa Wicka
COLLAGE WORKSHOP
Navigating Digital and Analog Worlds: Collage and Printmaking
Wednesday, September 30, 2020. David Wischer and Lisa Wicka discussed how printmakers work with the repeatable image and how printmaking and collage are natural partners.
Image by Lory Ivey Alexander
COLLAGE FORUM
Women in Collage: An International Round Table of Artists
Thursday, September 24, 2020. Dafna Steinberg, Lory Ivey Alexander, Ainize Txopitea, Lisa Wicka, and Marie-Pier Lopes discussed the role of women in collage as artists and subjects.
COLLAGE WORKSHOP
Cat & Paste Workshop: Cats, Art History, & Collage
Caturday, September 12, 2020. Cat & Paste Club's Dafna Steinberg exploreed cats in art history and showed contemporary cat collage.
Image by Max-o-matic
COLLAGE CONVERSATION
The Future of Collage
Saturday, September 5th, 2020.The Weird Show's Max-o-matic and Kolaj Magazine Editor Ric Kasini Kadour discussed what makes and defines collage and how technology and social media are used to organize community and diffuse artwork.
Image by Anila Babla
COLLAGE FORUM
Collage Beyond the Art Form: Collage as Therapy, Education, & Community Engagement
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2020. Hope Amico, Anila Babla, Anna Innocenti, Stacie Speer Scott, Julia Volonts, Holly Wherry, and Christine Sloan Stoddard discussed collage as therapy, education, community engagement, and how the medium can serve the needs of the community.
Watch the Event
If the video doesn't appear, you can watch it HERE.
Image by Michele Fanfair-Steury
COLLAGE TELEVISION
Collage Cast: What Would A Television Show about Collagists Look Like
Thursday, August 27th, 2020. Artist Daniel Lynds presented the pilot of a collage-focused show he produced. In the twenty-minute episode, host Michele Fanfair-Steury interviewed collage artist Dafna Steinberg about her artwork and life as an artist.
Image by Alyce Santoro
EXHIBITION
Radical Reimaginings
at 516 ARTS
Saturday, August 22nd, 2020.The artists at the virtual opening and book launch of "Radical Reimaginings" spoke about what stories they are re-imagining. MORE ABOUT THE BOOK
Image by Enrique “Kike” Congrains
COLLAGE STUDIES
Latin American Collage
Saturday, August 15th, 2020. From Lima, Peru, Kolaj Institute Fellow Enrique “Kike” Congrains spoke about collage in Latin America with 516 ARTS Director Suzanne Sbarge.
Watch the Event
If the video doesn't appear, you can watch it HERE.
Kasem Kydd at Thompson Gallery. Courtesy
of gallery.
EXHIBITION
Was, Is, An Eclipse at Thompson Gallery
Tuesday, August 11th, 2020.Curator Todd Bartel gave a virtual tour Kasem Kydd's "Was, Is, An Eclipse" exhibition of assemblage, collage, installation and video at Thompson Gallery and then, with the artist, discussed the exhibit.
Watch the Event
If the video doesn't appear, you can watch it HERE.
Image by Christopher Kurts
COLLAGE PERFORMANCE
Chaos To Order: Collaborative Collage in Performance
Saturday, August 8th, 2020. The Mystic Krewe of Scissors & Glue live collaged a 6-foot tall obelisk in the atrium of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans.
Watch the Event
If the video doesn't appear, you can watch it HERE.
Detail of art by Michael Pajón
GALLERY ISSUES
Meet the Gallerist: Christy S. Wood at LeMieux Galleries, New Orleans
Tuesday, August 4th, 2020. LeMieux Galleries co-owner Christy S. Wood gave a virtual tour of the "Family" exhibition and spoke about her work as a gallerist.
Watch the Event
If the video doesn't appear, you can watch it HERE.
STREET COLLAGE
Public Space, Street Art, & Collage: Kolaj Street Krewe
Thursday, July 30th, 2020. What is the role of collage in street art? Rosie Schinners and FANCLUB13 presented a history and contemporary survey and invite others to consider the art practice.
Watch the Event
If the video doesn't appear, you can watch it HERE.
Image by
EveNSteve
COLLAGE ARTISTS
Plagues, Monuments & Going Big: In-Camera Collage in a Hayfield Gallery
Saturday, July 25th, 2020. Artists EveNSteve offered a virtual tour of their outdoor art gallery and talk about their recent work, in-camera collage and their practice.
Watch the Event
If the video doesn't appear, you can watch it HERE.
Image by Ben DiNino
COLLAGE COMMUNITY
Kolaj Fest New Orleans: Tales from the Bayou
Monday, July 20th, 2020. At this virtual reunion of Kolaj Fest New Orleans, Rosie Schinners, Danielle Cole, Sarah Cowling, Ben DiNino, Kevin Sampsell, Paloma Trecka, Christopher Kurts, and Ric Kasini Kadour told stories about annual event that was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Watch the Event
If the video doesn't appear, you can watch it HERE.
EXHIBITION OPENING
Kolaj LIVE Online & Fundraising Exhibition Launch
Sunday, July 19th, 2020. Kolaj Magazine Editor Ric Kasini Kadour spoke about the series and artists in the Fundraising Exhibition to Support Kolaj Institute spoke about their artwork.
Watch the Event
If the video doesn't appear, you can watch it HERE.
Past Activities
ACTIVITY
Collage Castell
Inspired by a tradition at festivals in Catalonia, Spain, Collage Castell is an experiment in Human Tower building. The project is a collaborative collage making project and exchange. Here's how it works: Enclosed with your Kolaj LIVE Online Program Book are four Bauhaus-inspired starters on which we invite you to start a collage and then send to another artist to complete. Completed collages emailed to us will be posted in an online exhibition. MORE INFO & JOIN
Image by Vanessa Compton
EXHIBITION
The Fundraising Exhibition
Online, July 15th, 2020 to September 30th, 2020. As part of Kolaj LIVE Online, Kolaj Institute is hosting a Fundraising Exhibition to support the organization's residencies, publications, fellowships, and traveling programs. The artwork on sale benefits both the artist and the organization. VISIT
Artists: Meikel Church | Danielle Cole | Vanessa Compton | Enrique "Kike" Congrains | Ben DiNino | David Crunelle | Michael Pajón | Haley Sanborn | Jill Stoll | Athena Petra Tasiopoulos | Bianca Walker | Bredt Bredthauer | Andrea Burgay | Paola de la Calle | Guillaume Chiron | Katie McCann | EveNSteve | Olivia Descampe
PUBLICATION
Kolaj LIVE Online Program Book
The Kolaj LIVE Online Program Book is your guide to the event. The 62-page book includes in-depth descriptions of the fourteen Kolaj LIVE Online events along with biographies of the presenters and institutional partners. The book serves as the catalog for the Kolaj Institute Fundraising Exhibition. It also comes with four starter collages to participate in the Collage Castell activity, a cat-themed Cut Out Page for the Cat & Paste Workshop, and a commentary about the creation of the event. MORE
ORDER YOUR COPY
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