Overlapping realities

European Starlings weave their surroundings into the songs they sing. In urban areas, the birds can often be heard mimicking sirens, car alarms or the loud report of a jackhammer.

They gather snippets of their environment and rearrange those pieces to create something entirely new.

Collage artists take a similar approach to their craft. Artifacts of everyday life, such as photographs or business cards, can be arranged and incorporated into new, often surprising works of art. This is the favored technique of local artist Liz Cohn, whose work is now on display at the 12×16 Gallery.

Cohn, who has been making art for 25 years, is very enthusiastic about her latest creations. Entitled Five, the exhibit consists of mixed-media collage. The pieces feature stenciled paint as well as three-dimensional elements, including a cast of the artist’s teeth. 

“This current body of work is like overlapping realities: the high Renaissance meets Wild Kingdom,” said Cohn. “Dark, old classic works with birds and mountains and goats overlaying the scene.”

The juxtaposition of wildlife imagery with the formalism of Renaissance painting creates interesting, and sometimes amusing, dichotomies. In one piece, we see a starling overlapping a classical depiction of Madonna and child. 

Another repeated motif in Five is dots, which Cohn claims serves a special purpose in her work.

“The dots create a partial veil that obscure parts of the image and that makes you want to see what is hidden all the more,” Cohn said. “It allows me to redirect your attention and focus. Or, as Aimee Mann put it in one of her songs, ‘creating want by holding back’.”

Cohn’s method for creating art involves meditation and a quieting of her inner critic—keeping an open, non-judgmental state of mind. There is also a good deal of reshuffling, rearranging and reevaluating that occurs throughout the process which, Cohn says, can last several days or weeks. When the finished product is finally on display, viewers sometimes have interpretations of the work that are revealing even to the artist.

“People point out to me their perceptions of what they think I am saying, and my unconscious motivations are freshly revealed to me,” Cohn said. “Often the viewer is only bringing their own baggage and experiences to my works, but sometimes they help me to see the workings of my own mind. I can then see patterns and themes that were there all along, but were too close to see as I was creating the work. That is one of the things that is still so interesting about creating art for me.”

Collage seems to encourage this sort of psychic conversation between artist, viewer and environment. Providing a new context can open up previously hidden layers of meaning. Just like the starlings, we are capable of recreating our landscapes.