Collage as a technique is an 'open door' to the imagination. The artist overlooks boundaries or 'how to' and responds to a texture, an object, a photograph, a flash of color… 'to buttons and bows'… and brings them into a whole. That composition becomes a complex entity of ideas, forms and tones.

We present a few artists whose creativity breaks through 'borders' and stimulates us to view the ordinary as extraordinary!

The watercolors and paintings by UCSB professor William Dole evolved to applying fragmented manuscripts, fine tissues and headings from incunabulae to his sheets. Proxy is a good example of his serentipitous ramblings.

Jules Engel snipped black construction paper to create visual sounds in 'Rumble', cannibalized his own 'Train Landscape' and foraged through Louise Nevelson's tare sheets from her Tamarind Lithography Workshop session to create 'Homage to Louise'.

Betye Saar, Leonard Edmondson and Werner Drewes added social content in collages of printed material, postage stamps with drawing and painting.

An ultimate personalized version is seen in Emerson Woelffer's imaginative hand-torn coloraid paper compositions and Increase Robinson's 'Moonstruck' employing corrugated, twine, burlap, wood and pistachio nut shells!

Feel free! Venture into the musings of the artists and 'smell the roses'.