Susan Anthony: The making of a collage

Susan Anthony: The making of a collage

People often ask Susan Anthony (and us) about how her collages are made. And even once she's explained, people still think she paints over them. 

"I use cut paper to create my collages," she says. "People often mistake my work for paintings, but everything is made from paper, usually paper cut out of magazines and catalogs. I search magazines and catalogs for the colors to use in my landscapes. A strip of beach might be a piece of a linen curtain in a catalog, a patch of sky may have been the blue background around a polo shirt."

If she needs a large area of a particular color, she sometimes makes color copies of images she's found, working at a large table surrounded by piles of little pieces of paper — piles of blue, green, and sand colors.

"I usually also surround my work area with photographs I’ve taken that are the jumping off point for the collage I’m working on—typically I’ll have a photograph I’ve taken which is the inspiration for the composition of the collage and then a few other photographs which remind me of the colors I’m trying to create." You can see the inspiration for "MacMillan Wharf" in some of the shots in the video.

She does all this on heavy weight printmaking paper, cutting with small scissors or an Exacto knife and using Sobo glue. The blue stripes in the video are painters tape - used temporarily to hold things in place while she decides where they will go. 

See more collages by Susan Anthony in Wellfleet, and online!

Susan Blood