MIXED MEDIA MAGNIFICENCE: STACY GREENE
STACY GREENE
Mixed media is more than just a mix of different materials that an artist combines to create a work of art. More than any other kind of painting or sculpture, the artist becomes part of the mix. With more freedom and more diverse means of expression, we see more ideas, more of the story that an artist aims to tell.
Stacy Greene is a master of the mix. Her collage works are richly layered, deeply considered visual narratives that draw you into her inner world and invite you to share her journeys. They are both autobiographical and anthropological as she constructs each piece from bits and pieces of life she has captured, gathered and created over the course of her wide travels.
An award-winning artist, Greene began as a painter, then moved to lithography, then photography, video and film. She evolved to combine them all, working within an interdisciplinary practice and working elements of each into her prolific collage series.
Greene is largely influenced by pop culture, both at home and abroad. She takes most of the photographs that she uses is her collage works. She adds samples of other photos as well as pieces of advertising, paperback book covers, posters, found objects, and travel ephemera. They come together as pops of pastiche.
The “Bindi Pop” series of mandala collages are made from actual East Indian Bindi decorations, adhered with archival glue onto painted wood panels or handmade paper. As the West became enamored with the spiritual meaning and decorative potential of the bindi, Greene began collecting these brightly colored and sparkling symbols of the “third eye.”
The ongoing “Searching for Pierre Loti” series, an homage to exotic novelist Pierre Loti, incorporates Greene’s own photographs, layered with sampled photos, found paper, garbage scraps, labels, maps, shopping bags, flashe paint, and Bindi dots. These collages capture Greene’s own experiences in her many travels around the world. To date, the series includes Albuquerque, Amalfi, Bermuda, Cappadocia, Copenhagen, Grasse, Harlem (New York), Istanbul, Kyoto, Los Angeles, Menorca, Nara, New Orleans, Nyborg, Playa del Carmen, Reykjavik, Stockholm, Tokyo, Williamsburg (Brooklyn), and Cuba.
Greene's trip to Cuba inspired several collages, including "Cuba: A Study In Green" and "Malecón." The trip, in 2015, shortly after President Obama announced his intention to lift the US travel ban, presented a challenge. Due to the trade embargo that crippled the country for over 60 years, there was hardly any packaging or paper products for Greene to collect for her collage. She used Bucanero beer and water bottle labels, cut up pesos, an old postcard, and a an old paperback cover of Orwell's "1984." The yellow & black dot lines are photo samplings of Yayoi Kusama works.
In the ongoing "Tapestry" series, Greene incorporates her own photographs on loose canvas and then embroiders over & around the images, adding tactile texture to the mix. “Cappadocia Tapestry” is one of the four works comprising “Mithraeum 99,” a site-specific installation in the crypt of the Church of the Intercession in New York City.
In Greene’s series, “Movies I’ll Never Make,” we see glimpses of scenes that hint at film-noir-like dramas unfolding, redolent of romance, mystery, and nostalgia. Like mood boards, the works include photographic snippets that mix together to create impressions of stories.“Los Zapatos de Lorraine” juxtaposes a misty image of a woman taking a shower with photos of flowered high heel shoes, a strip of the flower pattern, and a view from a retro hotel window. Immediately, the viewer begins to imagine what has happened, what is happening and what will happen to Lorraine.
“Cluster Pop,” Greene’s most recent series, spins off of the Bindi Pop and the Pierre Loti artworks. It is broader in scope and larger in size with the use of bigger photographic elements.
Pop Art, contemporary advertising, and photos which reveals Greene’s personal history tell fascinating stories. “Cluster Fook,” the first piece in this series, centers on the imagery of various visual clusters, including citrus sections, caramel corn, macaroni & cheese, and Las Vegas light bulbs, all illustrating the artist’s seemingly random, yet actually meaningful memory fragments.
Greene studied painting at the University of Wisconsin-Stout and Central-St. Martin’s School of Art & Design in London, and printmaking at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. Her works have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum and the Pierogi Gallery, among others.
Read more about Magnificent Mix all this week on BeautifulNow. See Marvelous Mixed-up Landscape, Chartreuse: A Magical Mix, Mushrooms are Saving Bees & Us!, Magnificent Mix Master, Magnificent Mix of Natural & Inner Worlds, Top Food Art Mix Master, and check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.
Do you have amazing Artworks? Enter them in this week’s BN Photo Competition.