On March 31st 2005, I created
a 9 by 12 inch collage using that day's local newspaper, and
have continued that process without interruption every day since.
The Collage Journal is now in
its fifth year. I produce a collage every day solely created
from the images and texts of that day's newspaper. The Journal's
1500 collages reside in over 125 Strathmore books. I have thus-far
used 30 cutting boards and 215 Exacto blades, and 144 glues-sticks
and cut myself twice. It has become integrated in my daily life
as a meditation, contemplation and re-evaluation of culture and
identity. The relentless stream of the media creates cultural
tastes, fears and self-realization. My collages re-construct
these perspectives creating new visual and sociological landscapes.
I abstract small truths and intuitively build visual rhythms
that imbue surreal narratives, humor and symbolism. These works
say a lot about who I am, the world we live in, and how we perceive
and process media.
Visit each of the complete
first four years
Peter
Jacobs, who has been involved with the art of collage for
over two decades has developed a complex visual language
that seeks to reconcile the rational with the irrational.
Jacobs' collages are usually comprised of spliced images
applied to an architectonic framework. The stability of the
architectural foundation allows him to juxtapose incongruous
elements that, in spite of themselves, produce a singular
cohesive vision. Instinctively the artist seems to assert
the primacy of visual relationships over knowledge: in his
world it is color, line and space, not reason, that are determinants
of logic. The art of collage, as a reconfiguration of discarded
images, is a medium destined to render order out of chaos.
Jacobs has understood this inherent dilemna and resolves
it in a manner that is decidedly postmodern. Passages of
humor and wit, beauty and nature, psychology and rhetoric,
coexist as a fragmented though unified whole. Indeed, Jacobs
continues to reconsider the formal aspects of collage while
adhering to the basic principles of its Cubist origins,as
an ironic form of expression.
Marina Delaney
Chair: Visual Arts Dept., Dowling College
There
is an inescapable momentum to this artist’s project,
and part of the excitement of his work is the anticipation
of what will come next; in the news, in the art, and
on the imaginative plain where the two intersect.........
