2025 PROGRAM OF EVENTS
Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium, 25-29 June 2025. Our mission is to create a platform that allows us to explore critical issues around collage including how it is curated and presented, its role in contemporary art, and the tensions between collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a movement. Our goal is to create an event that attracts a variety of people working in various capacities, such as art professionals at museums, galleries, and centers as well as academics, writers, and artists. The program at Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2025 promises to be a unique experience. In building a program, our aim is to break down hierarchy and foster dialogue among art professionals working in a variety of capacities.
NOTE: Program times, location, presenters are subject to change. Check back often as we update the program and add additional information about activities.
PUBLICATION
Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2025 Program
Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2025 Program Book is a document of all things related to Kolaj Fest. In these pages, you will find a schedule and descriptions of sessions, bios and website information for artists and presenters, descriptions of evening events and special workshops. A full-color, printed book was included with your registration.
Wednesday, 25 June 2025
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
Welcome Reception
Wednesday, 25 June 2025, 3-5PM
St. Noir Cafe, 1128 St. Roch Avenue (check-in/information table)
St. Roch Tavern, 1200 St. Roch Avenue
St. Roch Market, 2381 St. Claude Avenue
Join us for a peripatetic Welcome Reception in the heart of the St. Roch neighborhood, just across St. Claude Avenue from Kolaj Institute Gallery. Your first stop should be St. Noir Cafe to check into Kolaj Fest, pick up your registration packet, and meet the organizers and other folks attending Kolaj Fest. The venue writes, “Our cozy café is more than just a place to grab your favorite beverages; it’s a sanctuary designed for relaxation, connection, and good vibes. At St. Noir, we believe life is best enjoyed slowly, accompanied by a warm beverage and a mellow atmosphere.” Next door to the cafe, St. Roch Tavern will be hosting collage making. This lively, neighborhood corner dive bar has existed, albeit under different names, since the 1890s. It is also the home of El Caimán Gordo which serves up traditional Colombian cuisine. Across the small street in St. Roch Market you will find more collage making in this vibrant community hub and modern food hall.
WEDNESDAY EVENING
Where Photography Meets Collage Opening Reception
Wednesday, 25 June 2025, 6-8PM
New Orleans Photo Alliance Center, 7800 Oak Street, New Orleans
For the past 18 months, Kolaj Institute has investigated the intersection of photography and collage through a series of exhibitions and artist residencies in partnership with the New Orleans Photo Alliance. This research has been guided by the idea, “The mediums of collage and photography are bound together in an ongoing dialogue. The photographer makes pictures of the world. The collagist remixes those pictures to tell a story about the world we live in. What happens when the photographer begins collaging their own work? What happens when the collage artist picks up the camera?” This exhibition is the third in the project. (image right: clockwise from top left: works by Linda Plaisted, Renée Allie, Reyna Barragan, and Kimberlea Bass. Courtesy of the artists and the New Orleans Photo Alliance)
Thursday, 26 June 2025
DAILY COLLAGE CONGRESS
Welcome to Kolaj Fest New Orleans
Thursday, 26 June 2025, 10:15-11:15AM
New Orleans Museum of Art
Kolaj Institute Director Ric Kasini Kadour will officially open Kolaj Fest New Orleans at Thursday’s Daily Collage Congress and hear from a number of artists about projects, activities, and exhibitions taking place during the festival. We will hear from Timeless, a narrative artist rooted in Bvlbancha: The Place of Many Tongues (New Orleans), who explores story in all of its forms and wonder: films, prose, poems, songs, etc. Andrea Lewicki from the Special Agent Collage Collective will introduce the Locative Collage Project taking place during the festival. Nikola Janevski will present their collaboration with Andrea Burgay that looks to bring collage into the fashion world. Artists will be invited to contribute to the Great Collage Swap taking place on Sunday. Thursday’s Congress is the primary orientation to Kolaj Fest New Orleans.
MUSEUM TOUR
Sacred Mother Space Gallery Walk
Thursday, 26 June 2025, 11:15AM-12:15PM
New Orleans Museum of Art
LaVonna Varnado-Brown (image) will lead a gallery walk of the museum that “honors the Divine Mothers through visual spellcasting.” The tour will include some works in the “New African Masquerades” exhibition as well as works in the “Afropolitan: Contemporary African Arts at NOMA” exhibition, Maman Brigette by John Lister, and Mami Wata figures in the African art collection, and others. Varnado-Brown is a 2024-2025 Creative Assembly artist-in-residence. “NOMA’s Creative Assembly residency promotes community engagement by welcoming artists to collaborate throughout the year with the museum’s permanent collection, special exhibitions, and programs.” During the Sacred Mother Space Gallery Walk, Varnado-Brown will share her experience as a resident artist. READ MORE
WORKSHOP
Preserving Family History
Thursday, 26 June 2025, 11:30AM-12:15PM
NOMA 2nd Floor Contemporary Gallery
Nayla Maaruf, NOMA’s Conservator of Photographs and Works of Art on Paper, will share her knowledge on disaster preparation at home for family photos and documents, which also applies to artists with a paper-based practice. Maaruf will also entertain questions from artists who have material concerns about their artwork. (image by Robbie Morgan)
SYMPOSIUM
Victorian Scrapbook House for Paper Dolls
Thursday, 26 June 2025, 1-1:30PM
New Orleans Museum of Art
At Kolaj Fest at New Orleans, Englewood, Florida artist, writer, and educator Beverly Gordon will present on collages found in late Victorian scrapbook houses. She wrote, “It is time to fully recognize the inexorable fascination, the pleasure, and indeed the magic of these albums and to fully acknowledge the creativity and artistic integrity of the house makers. Paper dollhouses are works of art; they represent an underacknowledged and undervalued form of collage.” (image from the collection of the Smithsonian Institution) READ MORE
GALLERY TOUR
Tour of “Nicolas Floc’h: Fleuves-Océan, Mississippi Watershed”
Thursday, 26 June 2025, 1PM
New Orleans Museum of Art: Second Floor Photography Gallery
Brian Piper, Freeman Family Curator of Photographs, Prints, and Drawings
French artist Nicolas Floc’h’s Fleuves-Océan project traces the movement of water across our planet, exploring its flow through varied habitats and representing the ways we are all connected by water cycles and systems. On display are vibrant monochromatic photographs of the color of water made under the surface paired with dramatic black-and-white landscape photographs made along the banks of the Mississippi and its tributaries—from Louisiana and across the country. Floc’h documented the entire span of the Mississippi during a 2022 Villa Albertine artist residency in the United States in collaboration with the Camargo Foundation and Artconnexion. This exhibition, organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art, illustrates the importance of a network of water that links people across the entire continent. Floc’h’s photography translates important scientific concerns—such as climate change and the looming water crisis—into an overwhelming aesthetic experience, without sacrificing any urgency or insistence. (image: The Color of Water, Mississippi River, Ohio River Confluence by Nicolas Floc’h (pigmented ink print; 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Maubert, Paris, France))
MORE
SYMPOSIUM
Symbols on a Cave Wall: Storytelling & Collage
Thursday, 26 June 2025, 1:45-2:45PM
New Orleans Museum of Art
Storytelling is a fundamental part of the human experience. Every culture does it, sometimes in wildly different ways. From painted symbols on a cave wall to role playing video games, people are telling stories but also sharing vital information, conveying ethics and morality, or building a cosmology that explains the world in which we live. During the symposium at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, we will hear from Andrea Lewicki, Carolyn E. Oliver, Jordan Cerminara (image above), Kirk Read, and Erica Trabold. Each of their practices is deeply involved with storytelling and collage. READ MORE
WORKSHOP
Collage in the Classroom: What Do You Want The World To Know?
Thursday, 26 June 2025, 2-5PM
NOHC Suite 204
How do we bring collage into the classroom? As part of her work in the graphic design department at Western Carolina University, artist and illustrator Jillian Ohl (image above) has been engaged in a curricular and pedagogical push to do just that. During this workshop at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, Ohl will guide participants through a workshop she uses in her teaching. After the collage making, Ohl will be joined by other educators who will discuss ways to adapt this activity to their own classrooms. New Orleans-area educators of any level are invited to attend this free, special event. READ MORE
GALLERY TOUR
Docent Tour of New African Masquerade
Thursday, 26 June 2025, 2PM
New Orleans Museum of Art: First Floor Exhibition EntranceLaura Moreno, NOMA Museum Educator
“New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations” is a major exhibition presenting the work of four contemporary artists working in cities across West Africa: Chief Ekpenyong Bassey Nsa, Sheku “Goldenfinger” Fofanah, David Sanou, and Hervé Youmbi. The exhibition offers a rare look into contemporary West African masquerade by contextualizing the works of individual artists within a range of social, economic, and religious practices and examining their networks of viewership and exchange. Made from materials including wood, cloth and fabrics, sequins, feathers, gourds, raffia, and cowry shells, the ensembles on view represent a wide variety of masquerade practices and societies. MORE
SYMPOSIUM
Where are we?: Collage Artists & A Sense of Place
Thursday, 26 June 2025, 3-4PM
New Orleans Museum of Art
Artists play a critical role in developing, expressing, and understanding a sense of place. Approaching the social, physical, and spiritual landscape is fertile terrain for artists who can draw out elements of a place in ways that they are seen and thought about in new ways. During the Symposium at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, we will hear from Paula Mans, Michael Eble (image left), Laura Cannamela, and Rosanne Walsh, whose work speaks to a sense of place. READ MORE
THURSDAY EVENING
Collage on Screen
Thursday, 26 June 2025, 7-9PM
Cafe Istanbul
Collage on Screen, an eclectic evening of moving images, is part of Kolaj Institute’s Collage in Motion project, which explores collage and the moving image, a broad, loosely defined category that includes animations, film cut-ups, collage film, stop-motion, documentaries about collage artists, and other forms of media in which collage—as medium or genre—is present. The program features curated selection of short films and work made by Kolaj Institute’s Collage on Screen Artist Residents: Bella LaMontagne (Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, USA); Christine De Vuono (Guelph, Ontario, Canada); Darren Floyd (Glendale, Arizona, USA); Hillary Carlip (Los Angeles, California, USA); Leniqueca Welcome (Washington, DC, USA); Marria Khan (Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan); Rachelle Wunderink (Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada); Sara C. Rolater (Houston, Texas, USA); and Tonya Dee McDaniel (Sinajana, Guam, USA).
Friday, 27 June 2025
DAILY COLLAGE CONGRESS
How Does Collage Work?
Friday, 27 June 2025, 10-10:45AM
Cafe Istanbul
In his 2012 book, Photography Changes Everything, Martin Heiferman observed, “We know that photographs work, but not quite how they do. We pay lip service to visual literacy, but don’t bother to teach it…We should spend less time focusing on what makes photographs good and more time figuring out how they do their work.” Perhaps the same can be said about collage. In this session, Clive Knights (image left) will present “The Fluctuation of Likeness: On the Necessity of Mis-recognition” as a way of answering this question. Knights will speak about “the necessity of mis-recognition in sustaining the vitality of a society.” He wrote, “Whether implicitly or otherwise, the imaginative gesture of the art maker that prompts an audience ‘to see something as something else’ holds the key to human communality. Such mis-recognition, in the sense of coming to know something as one had not known it before, is a release from the conventional into the possible, from the literal to the figurative. It is the epitome of human freedom understood and enacted by the poetic makers (artists) of a community whose work invites us to penetrate beyond the singular account (the rigidity of definition) to the field of potential readings (the effervescence of construal). The former requires alignment to a prescribed order as an act of obedience, the latter requires openness to the discovery of a shared order made explicit in acts of participation. The former imposes the solitary reading, the latter inspires multiple interpretations.” We will also hear from Emily Denlinger who will speak about her “Gain of Function: New Mutations/Old Traditions” project that is unfolding during the festival and about how one can participate in it.
SYMPOSIUM
Artist as Scientist, Scientist as Artist: Research, Collage, & The Pursuit of Knowledge
Friday, 27 June 2025, 11AM-Noon
Cafe Istanbul
In this session, two artists will share their experiences at the intersection of art and science: E-Squared Magazine is “an international print publication that draws from both art and science and is the embodiment of this synergy.” Its founder and director Emily A. Dustman will share her passion for art and science, speak about the work of the magazine, and introduce a project taking place at Kolaj Fest New Orleans. Now retired after teaching forty-one years in public education, artist and researcher Debora Joy Nodelman (image left) has engaged a study of arts-based research and documented her findings in the paper, “Constructing Knowledge in Bits and Pieces: Collage Inquiry as Arts-Based Research” which she will present. READ MORE
SYMPOSIUM
Be Gay, Do Collage
Friday, 27 June 2025, 1-1:45PM
Cafe Istanbul
In this session, collagists Tiffany Dugan, Rowan Buffington (image above), and Ric Kasini Kadour will consider queer collage and how artists are using collage to ask, “What does it mean to be a queer person in the 21st century?” While it is evident that collage as a medium is beginning to emerge from the shadows of more historically dominant art forms, author Jack Halberstam would caution the collagist against taking tried and true paths to success: “Being taken seriously means missing out on the chance to be frivolous, promiscuous, and irrelevant.” READ MORE
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
Collage Critique
Friday, 27 June 2025, 12:30-1:45PM
NOHC Suite 204
During this roundtable discussion at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, Seattle, Washington area artists Cheryl Chudyk (image above) and Sharon Wherland will lead a discussion and art critique. They wrote, “By embracing the importance of self-critique and group critique within one’s practice, it will go miles toward elevating collage as a medium that can competently compete against traditionally accepted art forms.” READ MORE
WORKSHOP
1+1+1=∞ One plus one plus one equals infinity
Friday, 27 June 2025, 1-3PM
NOHC Suite 258
“A collaborative workshop celebrating the art of juxtaposition, layering & superimposition” at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, Stephen Tomasko (Akron, Ohio (image above)) and Clive Knights (Portland, Oregon) will lead a collaborative collage making session that will result in a pop-up exhibition at the Saturday evening event. They wrote, “To the collagist, found images combine to form thresholds into new, unanticipated worlds opened by their combination and interaction.” READ MORE
WORKSHOP
The Exquisite Vivarium
Friday, 27 June 2025, 1-3PM
NOHC Suite 250
Vivariums are a point of inspiration for Cincinnati, Ohio artist and writer Nandita Baxi Sheth who “considers arts-based processes as alternatives to language for philosophical thinking, that is, thinking through materials and making as an artist-philosopher.” At Kolaj Fest New Orleans, Sheth will lead a workshop, The Exquisite Vivarium, during which participants will create collaborative spoken word poetry and collages and experience Sheth’s unique pedagogical approach while adapting the Surrealist game of Exquisite Corpse with prompts about the environment, ecology, and making a world for future beings. (image above by Henry Noel Humphreys, 1858) READ MORE
SYMPOSIUM
The World’s on Fire. Whatcha Gonna Do?: Politics in Collage
Friday, 27 June 2025, 2-3PM
Cafe Istanbul
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. During the Symposium at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, we will hear from Glenyse Thompson, Jody Zellen, Lori Petchers (image above), Suzanne Gore, and Jennifer R. Myhre about how their work seeks to contribute to the political discourse. READ MORE
WORKSHOP
Inner Bully to Inner Bestie
Friday, 27 June 2025, 2-5PM
NOHC Suite 204
In this three-hour workshop at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, New Orleans artist and life coach Jaclyn McCabe (image above) will guide participants through engaging, creative exercises that help them explore and unlock their potential; to overcome imposter syndrome and to boost their confidence and well-being, both in their personal lives and their artistic practice. READ MORE
SYMPOSIUM
Paper, Wood, Metal, & Everything Else: Materials and Collage
Friday, 27 June 2025, 3:15-4:30PM
Cafe Istanbul
Materials matter, particularly in collage where the material is never neutral. That magazine fragment, that clipping from a book, that piece of found cardboard has a life and a history and when we use it in our artwork, when we appropriate that piece of culture, we bring into our artwork its life and history. That is part of what makes collage magic. During the Symposium at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, we will hear from Julie Glass (image above), Julie Eisenberg Pitman, Robin Sanford Roberts, Flanzella, and Cindy Green; each of whom have a specific material practice about what they use, how they use it, and why it is important to them. They will speak about collecting and using paper, but also wood, metal, fabric, and other things. And then, if you want, we can talk about glue. READ MORE
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
Writer’s Corner
Friday, 27 June 2025, 3:15-4:45PM
NOHC Suite 250
At Kolaj Fest New Orleans, Portland, Oregon author and collagist Kirk Read; Lynchburg, Virginia, USA writer and artist Erica Trabold; and Castlebar, County Mayo, Ireland illustrator, writer, visual artist, and integrative psychotherapist Anthony D Kelly (image above) will host a Writer’s Corner, an informal workshop for those with a writing practice to connect with one another. Read wrote, “We will explore how these language and visual practices inform each other, how they compete and argue and agree in our minds and hands.” READ MORE
WORKSHOP
Resilience & Welcoming in Hope: Collage, Installation, & Photography
Friday, 27 June 2025, 3:15-5:15PM
NOHC Suite 258
In this workshop at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, participants will work together to create analog collage figures installation that will be photographed and filmed into a collage installation as part of Cape Girardeau, Missouri artist Emily Denlinger‘s “Gain of Function: New Mutations/Old Traditions” project. The resulting photographs will become a zine published by Kolaj Institute and a photograph will be included in Kolaj Institute’s exhibition on photography and collage in December. READ MORE
EXHIBITION TOUR & ARTIST TALK
cherrymilk and Post Hoc
Friday, 27 June 2025, 5-6PM
Good Children Gallery
4037 Saint Claude Avenue, New Orleans
During a tour of Good Children Gallery, Carrie Fonder will discuss Kirby Miles’ exhibition, “cherrymilk”, featuring her tactile assemblages that blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture. Additionally, Fonder will discuss her own multi-channel video exhibition “Post Hoc”. Both artists employ the language of collage in their diverse creative practices. (image left by Kirby Miles) READ MORE
EXHIBITION TOUR & CURATOR TALK
Collage As Art Movement
Friday, 27 June 2025, 7-7:30PM
Kolaj Institute Gallery
Kolaj Institute has long maintained that collage is a community that operates like an art movement. In this exhibition, we offer a number of examples of how International Collage Artists come together, make art, and diffuse that art into the larger culture. Join Ric Kasini Kadour for a brief introduction and exhibition tour. (image left by Ira Carter) READ MORE
FRIDAY EVENING
Dancing Pixel Party
Friday, 27 June 2025, 7-9PM
Cafe Istanbul
The Dancing Pixel Party is an evening of projected animated GIFs, collage making, dancing, and community. In 1989, CompuServe released a new version of its bitmap image format. Called 89a, this new format allowed images to be animated. Early GIFs gave us cheesy rolling “Under Construction” signs on AOL pages and pixelated dancing bananas announcing Peanut Butter Jelly Times. In decades since then, GIFs have matured into a sophisticated and recognized art form, some of the best of which uses collage as its technique and genre. At this event, we celebrate this medium and see what collage artists do with it. DJ. Bar. Collage Making. Dancing.
Saturday, 28 June 2025
AILY COLLAGE CONGRESS
The Artist Psyche, Markets, & Project Check-ins
Saturday, 28 June 2025, 10-10:45AM
Cafe Istanbul
The 1961 vocal composition Voice Piece for Soprano by Japanese artist and musician Yoko Ono is a conceptual artwork where the performer is instructed to scream “against the wind, against the wall, and against the sky.” When performed at her 2015 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, a film of the event shows Ono walking up to a microphone in the atrium and gutturally screaming for two minutes. While comments on the video are a litany of disbelief and insults, we propose that Voice Piece for Soprano is an apt performance of what it feels like to be an artist: to stand in front a room full of people and scream into the void with no reservation. In this session, we will hear from New Orleans-based artist and life coach Jaclyn McCabe. Her “journey as a creator and healer has been anything but linear. After earning degrees in Photojournalism and Cultural Anthropology from Western Kentucky University, she transitioned into retail, opening a boutique that celebrated plus-size women. It was there that she began to notice the deeper cultural wounds her customers carried–patterns of shame, criticism, and disconnection from their worthiness. This inspired Jaclyn to become a certified professional coach, focusing on helping people rewrite those narratives. Her holistic approach empowers clients to replace self-criticism with self-grace.” McCabe will speak about the artist psyche and report on the workshop, “Inner Bully to Inner Bestie”, which she lead the previous day.
We will get a preview of the Collage Art & Book Market and also get updates from a number of artists leading projects during the festival. Jordan Cerminara will speak briefly about what to expect at the evening event, “Dinosaurs on the Moon: Stories from the World of Collage.” (image left by Beth Guipe Hall)
SYMPOSIUM
Transformation in Collage as a Vehicle for Global Interruption
Saturday, 28 June 2025, 11AM-12:15PM
Cafe Istanbul
By collecting, chronicling and reconstructing objects, we create value and perhaps beauty with worthless things. The world is currently filled with unsheltered people, as well as migrants trying to find their way in unwelcoming cities—this work feels particularly poignant. How could this transformative approach be applied to social systems, politics and the environment? How could this change our cities and perhaps our world? During the Symposium at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, Julie Eisenberg Pitman (image left) will lead a panel on this topic with John Whitlock, Cheryl Chudyk, and Colleen Coleman. READ MORE
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
Collage Art & Book Market
Saturday, 28 June 2025, Noon-5PM
The Great Hall of the New Orleans Healing Center
2372 St. Claude Ave, New Orleans, LA 70117
Part of Kolaj Fest New Orleans, the Collage Art & Book Market is an opportunity for the general public to meet artists and publishers and to take in the rich and diverse cultural production of the international collage community. The public will be invited to peruse vendor displays or attend a talk or demonstration.
SYMPOSIUM
Kolaj Institute Projects
Saturday, 28 June 2025, 1-1:45PM
Cafe Istanbul
In this session, Ric Kasini Kadour will present an update on Kolaj Institute’s various projects and activities and speak about the future of the organization and answer questions.
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
Grief, Loss, & Recovery
Saturday, 28 June 2025, 12:45-1:45PM
NOHC Suite 250
What is the role of art in grief, loss, and recovery? In this Roundtable Discussion, artists are invited to share projects centered around grief, loss, and recovery. Bloomington, Indiana, Mexican American collage artist Jennifer Lynn Davis; New Orleans, Louisiana artist Jamie Amdal Hughes (image above); and Belmont, Massachusetts artist Missy Arellano will share their art practice and facilitate a conversation. READ MORE
WORKSHOP
Small Circles, Big Stories: A Tiny Collage Workshop
Saturday, 28 June 2025, 1-3PM
NOHC Suite 258
In this making-focused workshop at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, San Diego, California artist Robin Sanford Roberts will guide participants as they explore the art of storytelling through miniature collages. Using 2″ wooden circular discs as a base, attendees will create layered compositions with vintage and contemporary papers, and text. This small-scale format encourages a focus on composition, storytelling, and detail, making each piece a unique visual narrative. READ MORE
WORKSHOP
Encaustic Collage
Saturday, 28 June 2025, 1-3PM
Kolaj Institute
Participants in this popular & recurring Kolaj Fest New Orleans workshop will learn how to use encaustic medium (encaustic without pigment) as an adhesive and a transfer medium. After sharing the history of encaustic, Indianapolis, Indiana artist Beth Guipe Hall (image above) will demonstrate how to apply the medium, embed paper into the wax surface, fuse the surface with each application of medium, and three different transfer techniques. Working on 12×12 Masonite panels, participants will make an encaustic collage they can take home with them. Note: Pre-registration is required and there is a materials fee. READ MORE
SYMPOSIUM
Curiosity, Wonder, Joy, & Portals
Saturday, 28 June 2025, 2-3PM
Cafe Istanbul
With its roots and history in the Surreal, collage is a well-built path to exercise curiosity. What happens if I put these two things together? Collage’s ability to bridge time and geography makes it a vehicle to explore new realms. During the Symposium at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, we will hear from Anthony D Kelly (image above), Breasia Hayes, Savannah Green, and C. Joi Sanchez, each who are engaged in projects that explore wonder and joy and how life experiences take one down creative paths. READ MORE
WORKSHOP
Intuitive Collage: Surprises & Discoveries
Saturday, 28 June 2025, 2-5PM
NOHC Suite 204
How do we build trust in the process of discovery? Englewood, Florida artist Beverly Gordon is “an inveterate collector of imagery, paper, fabric, and natural detritus—objects like bones, shells and pods—which are part of my engagement with the natural world.” Using only printed materials on paper, participants in this Kolaj Fest New Orleans workshop will learn to intuitively select and position images to create interesting and meaningful collage compositions, and then discover what they wish to tell you. READ MORE
SYMPOSIUM
Putting It Out There: Projects & Practices of Collage Artists
Saturday, 28 June 2025, 3:15-4:30PM
Cafe Istanbul
There is something different, however, when an artist chooses to put their work out in the community. It ceases to be about personal expression and becomes part of the community’s discourse. During the Symposium at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, we will hear from Jamie Amdal Hughes, Emily Denlinger, Flanzella (image above), and Grace Wilbanks each of whom are putting their art into the cultural ecosystem. They are exhibiting and publishing; getting commissions; working it on social media; engaging their communities; and doing the work of culture all while trying to live lives as human beings with all that that entails. They will speak about contemporary art projects and their artist practice. READ MORE
WORKSHOP
Art of Resistance: Freedom Summer Collages
Saturday, 28 June 2025, 3:15-5:15PM
NOHC Suite 258
In this two-hour workshop at Kolaj Fest New Orleans , Saint Petersburg, Florida artist Glenyse Thompson will guide artists as they make artwork in response to 1964 Freedom Summer, an organized, season-long action designed to promote equality in the South. Participants will work with archive materials found in the Wisconsin Historical Society as part of their Freedom Summer Digital Collection. Thompson will share the history and New Orleans’ role in the campaign. READ MORE
WORKSHOP
Building Creative Communities: Arts-based Research Exercise
Saturday, 28 June 2025, 3:15-5:15PM
NOHC Suite 250
Belmont, Massachusetts artist and educator Missy Arellano works with students at Harvard University to use collage to express ideas about creative placemaking. In this workshop at Kolaj Fest New Orleans, she will lead an Arts-based Research activity that invites collage artists envision the role of art in their communities. Arellano will present her research into the value of the creative economy and invite “participants to reflect on what a creative city looks like in their own eyes.” READ MORE
SATURDAY EVENING
Dinosaurs on the Moon: Stories from the World of Collage
Saturday, 28 June 2025, 7PM
Cafe Istanbul
“Dinosaurs on the Moon: Stories from the World of Collage” is an evening of storytelling, poetry, performance, comedy, and collage. Beaverton, Oregon stand-up comedian and collage artist Jordan Cerminara is working with other Kolaj Fest attendees to present a program that is part open mic, part evening of comedy. “I love making people laugh as much as I love meticulously cutting out disparate images and rearranging them to make a visual goof,” wrote Cerminara.
Sunday, 29 June 2025
SUNDAY MORNING
Great Collage Swap
Sunday, 29 June 2025, 10:30AM
LeMieux Galleries
On Sunday, we will gather one final time to say our goodbyes and to conduct The Great Collage Swap. To participate, bring a collage to exchange to the Info Table before 10AM Sunday. In return, you will be given a number. All of the collages will be displayed. During the program, a collage will be selected and matched with a number and the holder of that number will receive the collage. As the collages are matched, each artist has a chance to share their story. The Great Collage Swap takes place at LeMieux Galleries on Julia Street, the site of the Amuse Bouche exhibition.
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Amuse Bouche
at LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA through 29 June 2025. An amuse-bouche is a small tasting of what is offered on the menu, often served as an hors d’œuvre or appetizer. With this culinary tradition in mind, this exhibition features collage work by participants of Kolaj Fest New Orleans. Twenty-six artists from across the USA offer small works for your viewing and collecting pleasure. As a whole, the exhibition is a small tasting of the International Collage Community. The exhibition was juried by Christy Wood, the director of LeMieux Galleries, and Kolaj Magazine Editor Ric Kasini Kadour and is an official exhibition of Kolaj Fest New Orleans, an annual, multi-day festival & symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, 25-29 June 2025. READ MORE