Collages from my series “Flower People”.
Assemblages of pressed flowers on top of vintage cabinet cards

As I have always gravitated toward literature and books, it has been very tempting to use this source for collage material. But doing this, I ran into a road block: It was just hard to butcher books for my art projects. I guess the stigma of book burnings and banning of literature runs deep in our consciousness, and the destruction of books is hard, even with the best intentions. But as I created more and more book designs myself, I thought I earned the right to tear a few up as well. So now, even though it still gives me the chills to rip through the spine of a beautiful old volume, it is also a very satisfying process to use the precious parts and give the book a whole new identity.

When Fold Gallery, located in Downtown LA’s “Last Bookstore,” asked me to be part of an exhibition called “Visual Poetry,” it seemed natural to dip into this book-related part of my production.

I'm showing 28 collages, and the show is up till April 2nd, 2018.

Read Print Magazine's blogpost about the collages (by Steven Heller) here.