collage – Circle Foundation for the Arts

Bernd Reichert

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“I was born behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany. I am now living on the surreal shores of Belgium. I studied printmaking in Germany (Berlin, Magdeburg) and Ireland. After many years of producing limited edition prints in all forms, I stopped for a few years my art production and traveled the world extensively. Now I have moved my area of interest to collages and paintings. I like to see myself as a kind of surrealist artist in the tradition of Leonor Fini, Eileen Agar and the likes.

My collages are a juxtaposition of elements, images, and objects incoherent to each other, thereby exercising a de-contextualizing form of violence on language and image alike. They contain a kind of strangeness, a disturbing element disquieting the spectator/reader who is confronted with a series of elements taken from one's everyday life which, being put one next to each other, provoke, suddenly, an incoherent situation, a source of obscurity and vagueness. Working with text and images, I like to encourage the viewer to oscillate between reading and looking. It is about reusing, recycling and re-contextualizing the over-abundance of images and information we can choose from Time, the various cultural influences of the placed I traveled to and a Babel-like plethora of different languages are recurring aspects of my work.

The artwork is telling stories, influenced by my travels, but also often containing autobiographical elements."

Select Solo Exhibitions

Gallery Kaire-Desine, Vilnius (LT), 2005

Gallery Meno, Cultural Centre Jonava (LT) , 2005

Musée de l’Art Spontané, Brussels (BE), 2008

Gallery 89, London (UK), 2010

Kunstwerkstatt, Magdeburg (GE), 2010 and 2013

Gallery ORT, Birmingham (UK), 2012

Cultural Centre, Minden (GE), 2014

Fay Wood

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“Art using found objects has attracted me since 1965, when I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, and saw large sculptures by local artists made from detritus on the Bay shore. They were fantastic, noisy, beautiful works with great humor and form - I never have forgotten them. As an art student at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, Mass. I began studying painting, but later, when I was attending a life drawing group, a sculptor encouraged me to carve directly in wood. This began what has become a deep love for sculpture and, later found object assemblage.

In 1992, when I finally had a permanent studio in the Hudson Valley of New York State, I began combining found objects with the cherry wood carvings I had been doing and continue to do so; adding found rag paper, wire, and paint to the mix.

I have also continued to paint, draw, and create tapestries and, recently I have completed an 18 piece portfolio of collages. I have an extensive exhibition history, including The Proskauer prize from the National Sculpture Society, exhibitions at Brookgreen Gardens, S. Carolina, Biennale Dell Arte Contemporanea, Florence, Italy, where I have been invited again in 2019, as well as many solo, group and invitational exhibitions in the USA. I will also be a featured artist with Artrepreneur, a website assisting artists to further their careers, in a film on PBS worldwide in April 2019.”

Denise Jones Adler

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What themes does your work involve?

Myths, fairy tales, legends and fantasies are key themes.

Describe your creative process.

I try to tell a visual story, using trash and everyday items as symbols for a updated and relatable mythology.

What influences your work? What inspires you? Why do you make art?

In the same way that mythology gave us hints at our shared humanity, I want to give voice to those symbols and continue to tell the stories, visually. As we continue to try and make sense of existence, the glorious and the horrid, the wonder and the injustice. The need to express, interpret and understand is what inspires my work.

What is good art? What makes a piece of art great?

When someone can blend honesty, passion, ability and a tenacious willingness to dig deeper, and a little bit of self-awareness with an idea, great art can happen.

What is the role of the artist today?

Making art fulfills a need in me, it’s hard work, it feels like living, it has all the same components, the flow - passion, sadness, love, joy, grief. Art is slow, it needs you to slow down, interacting means attempting to understand and relate to another human’s thoughts and ideas. Art is a connection to the past and a guide to the future. it is the best we as humans can do and it’s as fleeting and temporary as we are, yet it has a spirit or energy that, I believe, is the reason for everything.

Le Collagerie

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"Collage initially started as a form of meditation for me. Having been diagnosed with a mild case of Tourette Syndrome at a young age, looking through magazines and cutting clippings to create works of art provided a sense of calm and focus needed during a time of drastic change. I quickly realized my passion for giving old, recycled images from magazines a new life and meaning through collage. Having grown up on the border of Mexico and now living in San Francisco, my work is greatly inspired by color, fashion, culture and exploration.

As an artist, the genre of collage art allows me to create an optical illusion for the viewer. While from a distance one sees the full image, close-up the piece reveals a myriad of details. All through my collections, one finds the continuous elements of curiosity and whimsy conveying a spirited quality to each piece. Each collage is composed of donated recycled magazine clippings (or paper) making it Mother Earth-friendly."

Reiner Langer

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German artist, Reiner Langer studied with Prof. Lajos Sebök and had his first exhibition in 1979 followed by a wide range of international shows in Germany, Italy, Greece, Russia, France, the USA and many more. Multi-award recipient including Revierkunstpreis, Germany, UNESCO AWARD, Kremlin Gallery, Moscow, Dante Award, Italie, Michelangelo Award, Italie, UNESCO AWARD, Greece, Langer has done masterclasses and workshops worldwide. He did "Big Fire" Installations in India and Germany, two countries which he has also done successful performances in.

TAMARRA

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Ritva Georgiades

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Maryse-Anne Couteau

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Maryse-Anne Couteau is a self-taught artist living and working in France. The pencil has long been her favorite medium and she employs a coloring pencil technique, not widely used by grown-ups! In recent years she has also been working in ink.

In her early work, Couteau used very little color and instead focused on fine graphics to successfully suggesting volume with a black stroke gently underlined in color. Color increasingly imposed itself and eventually supplanted the line. At first, her tones were quite assertive but gradually became more refined. By superimposing different colors, Couteau creates mixes and nuances, which are a strong characteristic in her work.

Although the human body and face have a great place in her world, Maryse-Anne Couteau is not limited to any particular style or type of representation; staging objects as well as animals and people. The artist finds an inexhaustible source of inspiration in the real world; the fertility of her imagination and her keen sense of observation intermingle a wonderful inner universe and a precise and detailed reality.

In her surprisingly original compositions, we see the impossible desire to get right up close to the subject and reach its very essence. The covering, the sliding, the transparency of surfaces, in reality opaque, the repetition of shapes at different scales or the modification of angles of view on the same subject testify to a wish to see higher and deeper; to embrace the subject in its totality instead being limited to the superficial; to see further by projecting into the future and the past; to explore beneath the surface of things; go beyond the limit traced by the outlines and reach the infinite riches that hide in every aspect of reality.

After years of studies and a professional life, which was far from artistic, Maryse-Anne Couteau has decided to invest herself entirely in drawing and has devoted herself for nearly thirty years to her passion.

Astrid Ufkes

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From the Netherlands, Astrid Ufkes is a photo artist, specializing in magical landscapes. She studied for a number of years at the Academy of Arts and completed the School/University of Applied Photography. She is an interior designer. Since 2013 she has been developing photographic images in both black and white and color. Her work is exhibited and shown in galleries and musea in Italy, Germany, and The Netherlands and has found its way to art collectors. She is a member of Art Collectives Stichting Ateliers Apeldoorn, Salon West in Amsterdam and joined the organization ‘OverdeKunst’. In April 2017 her first booklet Contrasten ‘Oog om oor’, with writer Adam van Donk was presented. 13 Photographic images, accompanied by 13 written impressions.

Jaco Putker

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Jaco Putker is a contemporary artist and printmaker from The Hague, The Netherlands. He combines digital and traditional techniques to produce images that are both playful and sinister, nostalgic and magical.

His preferred medium is photopolymer, or solar plate, etching. This technique is a non-toxic way of etching which allows for photorealistic depictions. Rather than impose a meaning to his work, Jaco Putker invites the viewers to associate freely and give his etchings personal significance through individual perceptions and filters.

The titles of the etchings are non-descriptive and give no handle as to the meaning of the works. The artist considers his works to be illustrations to fables that don't exist but hopefully take shape in the viewers' minds.

Jaco Putker was awarded the Dutch national Business Art Service competition for Graphic Arts in 2010. He won the Awagami Paper Factory Prize (at the Awagami International Miniature Print Exhibition) twice; in 2015, and again in 2017. In 2017 he won the ON PAPER International Printmaking Award 2017.

His work has been exhibited throughout Europe, as well as in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, China, Australia, Argentina, Canada and the USA.

Bernd Reichert

Fay Wood

“I’m inspired by the materials I work with (usually found objects); the touch, feel and intensity of them. The pleasure of working with a beautiful piece of wood, the visual impact of applied color, and the textures of fabrics; how I can imagine the ways to use them is intensely moving.”

Denise Jones Adler