Una's work is beautifully playful. A lot of her work has a real comic book style (because she uses cutouts from comics), that also incorporates pictures of people from manuals, maps, soft colours and bright colours. There is just nothing not to love about her collages. I especially love how she uses collage in her Commercial works, it proves that collage can be very effective in everyday designs.
Also, she has a time-lapse video of her new collage project on her website, and I LOVE it, and would LOVE to see more of this kind of thing. Maybe I'll do one myself... If anybody wants to send me a video of themselves collaging, I will post it here.
Name (Real or Screename): Una Janicijevic
URL (Blog, Website): unaart.com
Location (Where are you from?): Toronto (but originally Belgrade, Serbia)
Q: Describe your work in 10 words or less.
A: The best I can come up with.
Q: What do you like to work with (magazines, photographs, vintage)? Be specific!
A: I mostly work with books rather than magazines (textbooks and manuals predominantly) but am also easily excited by stickers, electrical tape, candy wrappers, decorative hole punches, maps...
Q: How long have you been creating collages and what made you start?
A: I guess I've been focused on 'straight-up' collage for the last 4 years and I think it all began with some cut-out speech bubbles from comic books.
Q: Are you solely an artist, or do you work in another profession?
A: I kind of have three jobs: art, illustration and editorial design (at Maclean's magazine).
Q: Do you have any formal art training?
A: A degree from the Ontario College of Art and Design.
Q: Explain your favourite techniques.
A: Right now, my favourite technique borders on obsessive. I'm really into cutting out very tiny people (and objects) with small curved nail-cutting scissors and layering them on maps for my Ecumenopolis project. I just posted a time-lapse video of it on my website.
Q: Describe your favourite piece ever created.
A: Ooh, that's a tough one. I'm going to take the easy way out and say that's yet to come. I think an artist's whole life is spent trying to achieve exactly that.
Q: What other artists do you admire?
A: I admire anyone who's got a strong message and the guts to put it out there. Lots and lots of artists fit the bill. But I guess the point is to name names here, so at the moment I'd say the incredible book carvings of Brian Dettmer, the offbeat painted worlds Marcel Dzama and Balint Zsako, the powerful porcelain figurines of Shary Boyle, the gut-wrenching photos of Boris Mikhailov, the street art of elbowtoe and others...
Thanks Una!