Mary Alyssa Block is a great storyteller, through her collages and through her words as well! I read so many interviews (i.e. all of them) that sometimes answers start to sound the same. But then I get some that tell great stories that make me smile. Her collages are also quite whimsical, like they are really trying to tell you something.

Mary Alyssa Block
http://maryalyssablock.com
San Francisco

Describe your work in 10 words or less.

Steal what you cannot rob.

What do you like to work with (magazines, photographs, vintage)? Be specific!

I like to work with old National Geographics, newspaper images, things I find on the internet, with scraps of wood, string of all colors and textures, with old photographs I've taken. You know, stuff. Colourful little bits of things that can be glued together.

How long have you been creating collages and what made you start?

In my high school art class I would flip through old magazines and draw people or fancy scripts and then I'd turn the page and draw something from that page...and I'd build these weird layered drawings..it was the only way I could make a "collage" without cutting up the magazines, which I didn't really want to do since these old magazines were amazing relics to me. Now I have so many multiples of the same National Geographics that I don't care at all. To quote Louise Bourgeois, "I destroy everything!"

Are you solely an artist, or do you work in another profession?

I wish I worked in another profession! Please hire me. I have administrative skillz.

Do you have any formal art training?

I have my BA in art and I'm currently pursuing an MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Explain your favourite techniques.

First of all, it needs to be 3am. Then I drink coffee, listen to the Pat Garret and Billy the Kid soundtrack over and over and cut out pictures and move them around with my fingers until the sun comes up. If we're talking about my painting technique, just replace "cut out pictures" with "squirt out paints."

Describe your favourite piece ever created.

The best thing I've ever done is when I was around 12 and I finally got glasses. I stepped outside of the optometrist's office and it was sunny but there was a sharp wind blowing. I put my new glasses on my nose and looked up at these thick swaying trees overhead and saw every leaf for the first time. I looked down and saw every piece of gravel. I looked at my mother and I could see each of her eyelashes reaching up to the sky. Everything was sharp and clear and complicated and filled with detail to an extent I never knew existed. I thought about how much gravel there must be in the whole United States and how many leaves and how many eyelashes there were on all the mothers everywhere. I wanted to see all of America and know everything at that moment. I want to be amazed like that all the time, and I'm still trying to figure out how to share that feeling with people through my art.

What other artists do you admire?

Robert Rauschenberg, William Eggleston, Tim Craighead, Julie Roth, among many many others.

Thanks Alyssa!