Magazine paper, 8.5 x 11 in.
Brooke Newberry
Brooke Newberry’s practice treats collage as both medium and method: a push-and-layer process where cuts, seams, and “paper trauma” are left visible. She works agile and unglued, moving quickly, keeping compositions fluid, so intuition can land before certainty sets in. Imperfection is her engine. The result is collages that feel weirder and more vulnerable than their sources, proof that reconfiguration can surface truths that polished pictures tend to hide.
In the Words of the Artist
Magazine paper, 9 x 12 in.
Much of my practice is a push-and-layer meditation. I like to borrow the word agile from my tech background – letting go and moving quickly in collage feels like I’m exercising my intuition…there’s an art in knowing when you’ve landed on something. I don’t glue often; I find it too sticky and disruptive, and I prefer to keep things fluid. I’ve learned to rally for that hidden wisdom often found in the imperfect and accidental – the imprecise cuts or the paper trauma can create something a bit more tense, giving images a sadder, weirder, sexier, and, I suppose, more vulnerable life.
We’re deep in the therapy age, and I think we’ll continue to seek quicker, more physical, somatic hacks to process mental discomforts. Analog collage is one of those tools with a lot of untapped potential.
Magazine paper, 8.5 x 11 in.
Collage is a super democratic form of art – anyone can do it, and accessibility is part of its power. Its magic works fast. It’s this fluent, sensory, and important effort in just witnessing ourselves. The practice can show you who you are without requiring you to fully interrogate yourself. I also like that it can serve as an act of agency, reclaiming an image until it’s your own.
Collage, for me, is as much about discovery as it is about expression. That’s the draw. The repetitions showing up in my work are likely telling me something about myself…perhaps what I’m questioning, what I’m missing. Much of it connects to the complexities of identity as a mother – the feeling of being both lost and found, present and erased, the impossibility of a fixed self or fixed image once traumas or experiences are layered on top.
Magazine paper, 10 x 13 in.
Magazine paper, 7 x 8.5 in.
I work in a small space, which actually can cut down the overwhelm of too many options. I usually push and play on a feeling or vibe, and sometimes a single image is enough to spark the whole process. I chase the female form. Magazines, some vintage photography books. I don’t mind layering different paper languages - periods, textures, and sensibilities - if it works.
I came across Paola Dcroz’s work about a week after I started experimenting with collage. Her shapes do a lot of heavy lifting with fascinating flow and ease. I think the discernment behind an artist’s practice in what they choose to share is as compelling as the work itself. Each of these decisions builds the larger arc of an artist, and it can be really rich to see a piece and its place within a living body of work.
Magazine paper, 9 x 12 in.
Magazine paper, 8.5 x 11 in.
About the Artist
Brooke Newberry is a US-based (NC/CA) collage artist whose work explores identity through quiet chaos. She keeps the cuts minimal and the rules loose – mostly women, mostly feelings. Her work acts as a mirror, circling what she’s trying to understand or return to. Each piece sits within the spiny contradictions of womanhood and the ongoing mess of becoming. She lives and works between motherhood, the daily grind, and whatever silence she can get away with.
For Your Viewing Pleasure
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
ERICA BAUM (b. 1961, New York) is an American artist known for her photographic explorations of text, image, and materiality. Drawing from printed sources such as books, catalogs, and sewing patterns, her close-up compositions reveal hidden poetics within the everyday. Her work is held in major collections including the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
ELLIE GA (b. 1976, New York) is an American multidisciplinary artist, writer, and performer whose work spans video, performance, and artists’ books. Her practice intertwines poetic narrative, archival research, and lived experience to explore histories of migration, exile, and ecological displacement. She is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow and is represented by Bureau, New York.
LIBBY ROTHFELD (b. 1990, New Brunswick, NJ) is a New York–based artist whose practice encompasses sculpture, photography, installation, and assemblage. Her work often recontextualizes everyday, discarded, or banal objects—tiles, plastic containers, found ephemera—into compositions that provoke reflection on meaning, memory, and the overlooked.
MARY LUM (b. 1951, Minnesota) is an American visual artist whose layered collages, paintings, and wall works draw from urban architecture, signage, and found ephemera to evoke fragmented cityscapes. Her practice merges photography, drawing, color, and spatial intervention to recompose overlooked elements of the built environment.
LEE MARY MANNING (b. 1972) is a New York–based photographer whose work captures the quiet poetry of everyday life. Combining snapshot-sized analog prints with found ephemera, her compositions reveal subtle relationships between image, object, and memory. Her work is held in the Whitney Museum’s collection, and she is represented by Canada Gallery.
Out and About
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
▼ READ
Synthesis by Mari Katayama
This artist’s book brings together six years of work by acclaimed Japanese multimedia artist Mari Katayama. Created between 2019 and 2025, it gathers nine photographic series, including the newly completed Tree of Life, all produced within her home studio.
▼ READ
The millennial women of CougarTok on their 20-something boyfriends
Amid a bleak dating landscape, a new trend is emerging: more and more women have found themselves, often inadvertently, in relationships with younger men, and things are going surprisingly well.
▼ LISTEN
Mock Media II by Mock Media
This 2024 album is a delirious sprawl of post-punk, art-pop, and mutant electronics. It feels like flipping channels in a world that’s melting, where every frequency hums with paranoia and pleasure.
