ARTIST STATEMENT
The monochrome collage series is a creative exercise pushing back on modern codependency facilitated by the digital world. Deliberately void of imagery and color; norms one could ascribe to collage, this is “un-collage”. I wanted to challenge and engage the viewer with a minimal amount of stimulation in order to spark imagination. Like a Rorschach test, the beholder interprets what they will. Offered is an active meditation, perhaps a pattern emerges from the shapes cut from the century old book pages.
Midwestern cities arrange themselves as a repository for the past; inspiration, old books and materials are plentiful. The Midwest has always been an incubator of ingenuity; making something from the scrap pile is deeply cultural in the fly-over parts of our region. Monochrome analog collage functions as an extension of this cultural need, it is a way to articulate the absurdities of over-saturation and the surreal nature of life and art.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Bridgette Bramlage is an emerging artist working in Chicago. Her collage practice began in 2020 as a private narrative serial, seeded by pandemic realities which rapidly transitioned into a public creative endeavor. Presently, her collage pushes found ephemera to evolve from its functional origin into a new dialogue with the viewer. Piece by piece, it is a conversation.
Her first solo exhibition opened at One River in Evanston, Illinois in May of 2021. Her proximity to the Chicago interior design community has provided showroom representation via CKS Collective in the West Loop and ID Chicago in Wicker Park. Her art has been recently selected for Chicago literary magazine Boredom, Horror, Glory. In 2022 she will be an artist-in-residence at the Chateau d’Orqeuvaux in the Haut-Marne region of France. Her artistic journey began with acceptance at Detroit’s Center for Creative Studies for metal-smithing and continues to be a self-taught exploration of new mediums.