Clip Quips: Bryan Voell
"The Death of What Might Have Been," Collage.
Bryan Voell
Canoe Astronomy: Collages 2005-2009
1-5 p.m.
Blue Valley Library
9000 W. 151st
Overland Park, KS
913.495-3850
Hours: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, 1-5 p.m. Sunday
Runs through: June 30.
Artist's site: http://candlesinkites.com/bryan
Art in the Stacks site: http://www.jocolibrary.org/templates/JCL_InfoPage.aspx?id=2740
If cartooning is the class clown of the art world, collage is the kid sitting in the back of the room, quietly clipping the serious and turning it into the surreal (and often subversive).
Bryan Voell certainly knows from quiet environments: Not only is he one of the featured artists through July at the Blue Valley Library in southern Overland Park, he's also the branch's assistant manager.
And as his show, Canoe Astronomy, demonstrates from the outset, Voell also knows a thing or several about strangely compelling combinations and juxtapositions. As a result, his creations manage somehow to be simultaneously beyond-left-field odd and possessed of an inarguable rightness.
Take, for example, today's featured image, The Death of What Might Have Been. The idea of a blindfolded woman, being led through a crowd of Buddhist monks while being embraced (held back, perhaps?) by a manatee, is at least three kinds of weird. Then again, what else could be happening? Obviously, everyone and everything concerned has a reason for being there.
The pieces are created with hands, a cutting blade, some archival glue and lots of old and obscure magazines and periodicals,Voell writes. I've been inspired by Joseph Cornell, Shirin Maali, Jiri Kolar, and Don Van Vliet, not to mention "National Geographic" and "Paper Airplane Battalion" magazines.
For a while, Voell — like the quiet kid in the back of the room —was cautious about putting his work on public display.
I've been making collages for over ten years now, he explains. At first they were give-aways for friends and family but after some psychic spinach I upped the ante for myself and got serious.
Good thing, too. Voell's art is too much fun to be kept secret.
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Also, the exhibit ended June 30, unfortunately.
Steve, Thank you for such kind words. I really enjoyed showing the work and look forward to more exhibits.
I am familiar with Bryan Voell's work and possess several pieces. I've also been lucky enough to be the recipient of some of his homemade cards that exhibit the same imaginative quirkiness that is so delightful. I'm looking forward to seeing more of Bryan's work on display in Kansas City. It certainly deserves wider exposure. I'm so glad that Bryan ate the psychic spinach.