Magazine Strips, 3 x 4.5 in.
Vanessa Stevens
Vanessa Stevens’s collages are studies in restraint. Working exclusively with one-inch strips cut from magazines, she constructs images that tiptoe between abstraction and representation. A fold of satin, a lock of hair, a glance, each fragment is severed from its original context and placed beside something new. Trained in photography and immersed in the world of commercial imagery, Stevens approaches collage as a way of seeing, how unexpected juxtapositions emerge through proximity.
In the Words of the Artist
Magazine Strips, 2 x 2 in.
I approach the process of making formally, looking for alignment of shape, color, texture, or light. When I can look back at an arrangement after looking away and still see the connection, then I know I have something. When a combination or juxtaposition transforms a fold of fabric or a slice of a face into a new dimension or expression, then it's done. For me, collage is a way to make a picture rather than to take one. There is a physical connection in collage that I love, and the result is always more than the singularity of one image or frame.
Magazine Strips, 2 x 2 in.
I expect collage will continue to grow in both analog and digital forms. There is a reverence for printed images that makes collage very appealing for generations who grew up with physical books and magazines, and for new generations who can easily exist without them. At the same time, the ability to have everything at your fingertips digitally means you can combine images from anywhere, anytime.
In my work, I only use precut 1" strips of printed material, usually from magazines, which is more of a parameter than a theme. I hope the fragmentation removes the original meaning and replaces it with more formal ideas of color, composition, and texture. Abstraction is created from representation.
Magazine Strips, 4 x 4 in.
Magazine Strips, 2 x 2 in.
I work in the commercial side of image making, so it’s a welcome change to look at images apart from their intent or subject. The strips I work with are parts of something, and I get to decide what the new whole is, and that wholeness is simply what I decide feels right.
It could be anything, it really depends on what feels right at that moment. Sometimes I’m after an organized chaos where lines connect but no shape is discerned, other times I work towards making some sort of object, or an expression. I see symbolism and emotion in many of my collages, but that may not be evident to others, which is fine with me.
Magazine Strips, 3 x 3.5 in.
Magazine Strips, 2 x 2 in.
About the Artist
Vanessa is the founder and principal agent of VS+Company, a New York–based creative agency representing artists in fashion, beauty, and luxury with a division dedicated to post-production and printing of select commissioned and fine art photography. Vanessa holds a BFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design. She lives and works in Brooklyn.
For Your Viewing Pleasure
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
ADI DICK is a designer based in Norway, originally from Wellington, New Zealand. With a background in music and a Bachelor of Design, his creative path began in Wellington and took shape in London before settling in Oslo.
NICOLO GENTILE is an artist living and working in Philadelphia, PA. He received his Master of Fine Art in Sculpture from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University and his Bachelor of Fine Art from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in General Fine Arts
RODY WAL is a collage artist based in Leicestershire, UK, working primarily with analog techniques. Their practice centers on hand-cut compositions that explore surreal juxtapositions and hidden narratives. Through layering and reconstruction, Wal invites viewers to find new meanings in old images.
DIEGO LEBEDINSKY is a collage artist based in Argentina, known for his analog compositions that blend vintage imagery with surreal humor and social critique. Working by hand with cut paper, his work reimagines familiar narratives through unexpected juxtapositions.
LUTHER KONADU is an artist and writer based in Winnipeg. His practice combines photography, text, and installation to explore the politics of representation and the constructed nature of portraiture. Konadu is also the founder of Public Parking, an online publication dedicated to contemporary art and critical discourse.
Out and About
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
▼ READ
Future Greats 2025 - ArtReview
Justine Kurland spotlights Rachelle Anayansi Mozman Solano, a Panamanian-American artist whose work excavates colonial legacies, matrilineal memory, and racialized mythologies. Drawing from psychoanalysis, performance, and ethnography, her photographs and films navigate the boundaries between fiction and truth.
▼ READ
Pack by Gray Wielebinski
This book collects over 200 of the artist’s full-page collages, loosely assembled around themes of masculinity, collectivity, games, sex, guns, and various forms of violence. Illuminating multiple meanings of the term “pack” – from packing heat to pack mentality – the book toys with the idea of the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
▼ LISTEN
Lamaze by Geneva Jacuzzi
This album is a fever dream in synthetic form, an immaculate conception of avant-pop birthed through cracked VHS filters and drum machine contractions. Released in 2021, the album stitches together lo-fi synth ballads and theatrical new wave tantrums.
