Sarah Z. Short (she) is a mixed media collage artist from the woods of Rhode Island. Her background as an English teacher explains her love of books, which she also enjoys using as the primary material for her collages. She has recently started showing her work in local galleries and online in Contemporary Collage Magazine. She’s inspired by faded book covers, foxing on pages, and vintage ephemera.
“I began this piece with the illustration of a young woman taken from an old book (Edward Eggleston’s 1871 novel The Hooser Schoolmaster), assuming that she’d end up covered by collage materials. Her gaze was so steady as I worked that I instead created around her. An artist once created her, and I wanted her to be seen again. As I added fragmented bits of text from other works, her story came to me as I brought her from obscurity into the light of day.
“I find that many of my pieces are about creating a new narrative for materials that would otherwise end up in the trash. My compositions are the result of how my materials respond to being torn and glued. The paper tears, bleeds, or wrinkles, and I have to decide if I want to leave it or cover it over with something else. The unexpected behaviors of the materials once frustrated me but have become part of how I work.”
