Ruby Pool - 2005, paper collage constructed in cigarette box, 5.3/4" x 4.1/4"

Collage artists combine scraps from an endless range of source materials and paste them into arrangements, creating new works. I choose my images from vastly differing time periods and places. The process is guided by an overall concern for patterns, colors, narrative possibilities, or shapes that resonate together. These are some of the considerations that inform my work. Images from art history culled from color plates in books are among my favorite sources. Old Japanese prints, Byzantine and European medieval art are among the many styles and periods that fascinate me. The smallest detail can be captivating. A figure may be garbed in a robe with a sleeve I'd like to see abstracted—removed from its context—so it can exist away from its original surroundings. Say the sleeve in question appears in a painting from the early Middle Ages. It may seem to contain, in its abbreviated shape, a compact summation of the Christian severity of the time, with its abrupt slashes of diagonal shading. Perhaps it suggests nothing so much as painterliness, which was not to come into its own for centuries (in Modernism), but it is hinted at, even plain to see, when a particularly explicit passage is removed from its representational context.

My paintings, too, are collages, sometimes literally, often just in spirit. Landscape and nature are abiding interests, as are religious subjects. Scenes within the original source materials are ripe for stealing, if only to pay them homage, or even just to study them more closely by painting them. Combining fragments from the past, sometimes with snatches from the present, is one way to make sense of the bombardment of imagery we encounter in our lifetimes. In appreciation of our sense of sight, I like to fix such fragments together.

Pat Gubler has been performing/releasing music under the pseudonym P.G. Six for the past ten years. His work fuses an eclectic range of influences such as folk songs, early music, experimental music, and rock & roll. He often utilizes unusual combinations of instruments to explore the possibilities of timbre. P.G. Six has provided an audio component for this installation, a series of pieces for wire and bray harp, played on a loop in the gallery. These pieces, which can also be considered miniatures, are structured improvisations based around "The Fallen Leaves that Jewel the Ground" from his first full-length recording, Parlor Tricks and Porch Favorites. The instruments P.G. Six plays on this loop are a 25-string wire harp by Triplett and a gut-strung bray harp by Ardival. Wire harps are strung with metal strings (brass & phosphor bronze being the common modern materials) and are characterized by their long sustain. Bray harps are strung with gut or nylon and are constructed to buzz, much in the manner of a sitar. Both are examples of instruments popular throughout Europe in the Middle Ages.