ARTIST STATEMENT
Every day brings wonder and worry navigating life as an artist, mother, and citizen. We live amidst all the shouting. I am obsessed with how we show up in our lives while bombarded with an incessant soundtrack of alarm, outrage and opinion. Collage has become a creative meditation on how complicated and personal multiple perspectives can be in a challenging time for difference and discourse. Some might resist engaging with my work, much as we resist the morning headlines. What phrases will resonate and pull focus in an attention economy where opinion is as disposable as newsprint?
Clocks Go Forward – Future of Abortion Rights – Wall Street Journal March 9-10, 2024
Feel free to spin this working raffle wheel and win a prize on the 28 days of the perpetual feminine cycle. Cut from only one newspaper from Daylights Savings weekend, each of the 28 days brings similar challenges and different hard questions to all women. The 2024 election brought an urgency to keep the answers and access in the hands of those needing options.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Southern Californian artist, Kelly Hartigan Goldstein creates meticulous analog newspaper collages to ruminate the tension between private reflection and public discourse. Working only from a single day’s newspaper, and armed with a timely political issue, she builds intricate visual narratives composed entirely of cut text and printed images. A former Hollywood animation and film effects professional, her cinematic background informs compositions that merge storytelling with challenging political discourse and her love of wordplay. A University of Michigan Art School graduate, Hartigan Goldstein is active with Southern California’s Women’s Caucus for the Arts and Los Angeles Art Association. In 2024 she partnered with Vote Forward on a benefit print sale supporting election engagement. Select Juried Shows: 6000 Circles Honoring the Feminine,(Range Projects Gallery); Pattern & Design (Shoebox Arts, curated by Kristine Shomaker), A Woman’s Voice in a Pivotal Time, LA Makery, curated by Kim Abeles) Works on Paper, (Long Beach Island Foundation, New Jersey; curated by Samantha Friedman of MoMA) ; Trail of Angels ( Gallery 825, curated by Elizabeth East of LA Louver) Recently her political collage was featured at Hotel Laguna’s Art Start (Laguna Beach Art Walk), and awarded Staff Pick (Laguna Beach City Hall, Art That’s Small). Her work is currently exhibiting alongside two fiber artists in FREE To SP%@K! taking on the current political climate and the effects on the first amendment (Village Well Books & Coffee Culver City 2025, Road to California Quilt Show, 2026)
© Kelly Hartigan Goldstein