Again, we have another practicer of the "collage that feels good" method. It's obviously collage that looks good, too. Michelle says she feels like it's a crime to rip pages out of books, does anyone else feel this way? I know that I felt pretty guilty once when I had a little tour of a rare book library... And I got to touch books like the Gutenberg Bible, and older, gold-leafed, leather bound, vellum books—with little notes written in the margins by a previous owner. And I'm a book lover, I respect books. I'm just not convinced that today's mass market paperbacks are going to be collector's items one day. But you never know.
Name (Real or Screename): Michelle Shofet
URL (Blog, Website): No real site, but I post things on my flickr.
Location (Where are you from?): Los Angeles, CA
Q: Describe your work in 10 words or less.
A: Mostly it's a precarious merging of the soft and the crude.
Q: What do you like to work with (magazines, photographs, vintage)? Be specific!
A: I am constantly on the lookout for National Geographic magazines published before the 1980s; the print quality is something really special. I am also excessively fond of "found things," though I struggle with that term and am not entirely sure of where one draws the line. Still, I will stop in my tracks or get off of my bike for a seemingly interesting scrap of paper or fabric. Aged paper is also my favorite—I like when it's real soft and smelly. And old science/anatomy textbooks. I once went to an estate sale and bought all of these gorgeous medical texts that belonged to the late doctor who had lived there for dirt cheap. Sometimes it feels like a crime, tearing apart such precious pages.
Q: How long have you been creating collages and what made you start?
A: I think I started last November. I had been collecting scraps and weird pieces of string and little photos and I just started fixing them together in a book that I was prompted to purchase from a used book store because of it's nice-looking spine. It's a copy of Andre Gide's journal and the paper took watercolor really well so I just went with it. Over time, I graduated to loose-leaf sheets, but most of the paper i use as the backdrop of my collages have text on them. I'm afraid of blank spaces.
Q: Are you solely an artist, or do you work in another profession?
A: I'm not comfortable calling myself an artist. I'm a student and making these collages has a therapeutic effect on me; I make them for fun. Some of them were shown in a university art gallery and that just made me anxious. I like showing what I make to my friends and I'll put images on the internet, but standing in a room with a bunch of people and professors examining my little works that are very dear and personal to me is the opposite of fun.
Q: Do you have any formal art training?
A: No. I think I may have taken art classes as a kid, but the teacher just fixed everything I messed up on (which was everything), so I never got very far.
Q: Explain your favourite techniques.
A: I don't have any. My process is different almost every time and I am constantly experimenting with new ways of putting something to the paper. I like smearing a lot, and feeling textures. I have this thing about tactility. I just want to put my hand in a bucket of paint or squeeze a cooked yucca plant.
Q: Describe your favourite piece ever created.
A: My favourite collage came together over the span of a month. I added and subtracted until I felt like it was finished. It was also the first piece I ever made. When I was finally done, it was just like, "Hey, that was really cathartic and it's aesthetically interesting to me and I didn't even know what I was doing. Let's try it again." It's the piece with the grandfather clock and the little pink hand on that top.
Q: What other artists do you admire?
A: Hope Kroll is my favorite collage artist of all time. I discovered her through a professor. Also, Robert Rauschenberg. Sometimes I get the feeling that he also wanted to put his hands in paint and cooked yucca plant.
Thanks Michelle!