Thank you friends of Deming Library for hosting my solo collage installation Inspirit-Form.

I thought i'd author a post on how this show came to be. 

I have been a collage artist for twenty years. In the past few years my work has become a personal narrative; highlighting the loss of a home, a broken heart, a journey west, and the challenge of making a home here in Washington. 

My collage work has grown. I've shown and sold collages. Doing so has been very inspiring!

In December I found an Audubon magazine in the free bin at the Bellingham Library. 

2017 artfully began with a decision to collage daily. 

Torn pages from that found Audubon magazine became part of early January work.

I found the work to be strong and affirming.

Thanks to FB - and a collage that I posted also made from that same magazine, I was invited to show my work at the Deming Library. A solo hanging! Imagine how honored I was. 

I decided moving forward to source part of my image inventory for this exhibition from Audubon magazines.  

Not knowing how hard Audubon's were to find, I had to put out a call for them on FB.  Friends sent me magazines from around the country to help me with my show! Even the Deming library pitched in. 

The work evolved in a very organic way. Different from my daily collage work in that it didn't necessarily follow a narrative of my day to day. It did however touch on a subconscious level some personal struggles.   

I had recently befriended a curator - Jody Thompson, and invited him to collaborate on the project. Jody is responsible for the title, and the entire written narration of this hanging. I loved working with Jody. He brought a rich and provocative commentary from an outside perspective. Experiencing his version of my collage work was very emotional for me and also very educational. Jody brought earnest and detailed attention to the many facts about the birds involved in my collage work. 

I created 22 pieces from February to June.

Inspirit-Form hangs from Sept 20th - October 28th at The Deming Library -- there is an artist talk and reception Friday October 27th at 4:30

This body of collage work is on a natural white cotton pithy 130# paper sourced by Pentalic - made in the US.  A percentage of sales from The Natural Pentalic Sketch Book Series is donated to The American Wildlife Foundation. They are framed in a 11x14 black studio frames with a black matt. 

15% of sales from this show goes to Friends Of Deming Library. 

Karen Hanrahan is a narrative collage artist and photographer.  

She is founder of Keyhole Gallery And Making Space ( inconveniently located in beautiful Sumas, Wa) home of Tailgate ArtMart. Karen is the mother of two adult children, she loves cooking from scratch, reading, taking road trips (especially here in Washington!) and she adores the color blue.