acrylic, spray paint, photographs, book/magazine
pages, beer labels, tape, glue on canvas
48 x 36 in.
Cody Haltom
Cody Haltom is an artist and graphic designer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Working across collage, painting, book design, and branding, he treats each discipline as part of a single visual language. His recent work moves through the tension between destruction and renewal, fusing found and generated imagery with layered marks, repetition, and purposeful accidents.
In the Words of the Artist
photographs, spray paint, plastic sheet, tape, glue on
bristol board
16 x 20 in.
Collage lends itself to a sense of play, to not knowing where something is going, which I find important when making work. It allows for experimentation, for layering, for accidents. I love stumbling across a pairing that creates an intense charge. I had this experience recently when I dropped a photo of a bird over a red plastic bag. In those moments, I don’t always know why I’m drawn to something, but I clearly am on a gut level, and I like chasing that feeling.
Those unplanned moments are a big part of why I’m drawn to collage. You’re able to take in the imagery or ideas of others and create new meaning or context, which I always find interesting, and comparable to how we experience things in life. As a form, I like that collage lets you work with larger themes and also get very specific, which isn’t always the case in other mediums.
Acrylic, spray paint, photographs, magazine page,
glassine envelope, paper, tape, glue on canvas
36 x 36 in.
I don’t have a distinct theme, but a lot of the imagery in my recent work is connected to destruction or loss, and then the opposite end of that experience with renewal or redemption. I’m interested in what makes people act in such contradictory ways — for example, someone can be completely self-destructive while also longing for freedom or salvation. Addiction is a big part of the work. I hope that these ideas play out on a personal level and in a much larger, general way.
I’m always looking for imagery or material that interests me, and I mostly do this without any sense of how to use it. I spend a lot of time in this space, just gathering. There are times when I know immediately where I want to take something, but more often it’s just experimentation. I find putting things away for a while to be helpful. I take a lot of pictures of the work as I go, so I can look at it on my phone in a very small square. This helps create space from the work in a good way. I like to let things build, to create tension, before I start making real decisions. Most of the time I’m working on multiple pieces at once, and they inform one another.
photograph, glassine bag, plastic bag, tape, glue on
bristol board
20 x 16 in.
arcylic, spray paint, photographs, book/magazine
pages, tape, glue on canvas
22 x 30 in.
My recent work uses acrylic, spray paint, oil stick, charcoal, and found materials (photographs, book pages, plastic bags, glassine, etc). Crosses and tornadoes are common in the work; I grew up in Oklahoma, so they’re very familiar images to me. They both carry weight, and I like that many viewers will come to that imagery with their own baggage or charge. Nature imagery is also common, most of which I’m using to push the themes mentioned above. The images in my work are a mix of found and generated. I’m also drawn to repetition with small variations, and I’ve been using a lot of red, black, dark green, and brown.
Acrylic, spray paint, book/magazine pages on canvas
12 x 16 in.
Collage on bristol board
12 x 9 in.
About the Artist
Cody Haltom is an artist and graphic designer based in Santa Fe, NM. He works with clients across a number of disciplines, including art direction, visual identity, and book design. He’s also a partner in Trespasser, a photobook imprint, and consistently works on self-initiated creative projects.
For Your Viewing Pleasure
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
KLUB7 is a collective of artists based in Berlin and Halle. They have developed their early artistic footprints in the form of large-scale murals and site-specific performances in public spaces.
VINCENZO DE COTIIS was born in 1958 in Italy. He studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano and founded his studio in Milan, where he lives and works. His work represents a winding path that often doubles back upon itself, one fueled by parallelisms of space and time, cultural layerings, and quantum leaps.
BRIAN HIPPERN is a Seattle-based artist, working across analog photography, found imagery, and handmade multiples. Rooted in tactile process, his compositions emerge through cutting, layering, and recombining fragments into intimate, rhythm-driven arrangements.
MARK MANDERS (b. 1968, Volkel, Netherlands) is a Dutch conceptual artist known for constructing an ongoing fictional self-portrait through sculpture, installation, and drawing. His work often resembles archaeological fragments or suspended moments in time, combining clay figures, found objects, and architectural elements into quiet, enigmatic environments.
WANDA HELA KATZ is a mixed media book artist who makes one-of-a-kind miniature handcrafted books and folios from antique ephemera, vintage papers, textiles, and original photographs, often incorporating rust and copper elements.
Out and About
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
▼ READ
Grand Gestures by Amanda Ross-Ho
This publication is a visual overview of a decade of Ross-Ho’s career. Presented chronologically, it documents the artist’s techniques of scaling and replication, and the use of found objects, illustrating how she uses these methods to transform everyday items into works that explore themes such as loss, time, and preservation.
▼ READ
The End of My Beginning by Jamal Cyrus
This full-length monograph offers an overview of Jamal Cyrus’ practice of cobbling modern artifacts that trace the evolution of Black identity across the African diaspora, the Middle Passage, the Jazz Age, and Civil Rights movements from the 1960s to now.
▼ LISTEN
The Truth by D.R. Hooker
This 1972 album is a strange and deeply personal psychedelic rock record made outside the mainstream music industry. Funded independently and recorded with hired studio musicians, it blends fuzzy guitars, dreamy organs, and almost naive lyrics into something raw, spiritual, and unintentionally surreal.
