Photomontage: Eva Lake/ 1978 - 2009
Before I ever montaged, I collected old magazines and nostalgia.
As it was the images I loved most, I had no problem cutting them up to create my own stories. Eventually they were made for fanzines.
I started right around the time of punk in the late 70s. All of the black and white photomontages directly above were made at that time.
I was interested in the Dadaists John Heartfield and Hannah Hoch and the Pop artist Richard Hamilton.
In the early 80s the work then took a turn towards New Romanticism. Many were used in window installations instead of for a Xerox machine.
I was reading Jane Austen and other classic novels, plus the Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki.
Over the years I've made all kinds of art but I keep coming back to photomontage.
I've called it a Bedroom Art as often that was the only place I had to work in.
You can make it out of a suitcase. I was never one to just slap things together though and sometimes images traveled around with me for years before I used them.
In 2002 I had a Collage Show at the White Gallery at PSU, showing works from 1982 - 2002, choosing 30 montages out of hundreds for the show.
As I went through my inventory I saw what a constant art it had always been. No matter what else is going on, I've always collaged.
9/11 was oddly a time of regeneration for me. Terrible as that sounds, I know I was not the only artist to feel suddenly not alone in their paranoia.
I returned to previous themes and works I had made years ago had a renewed meaning.
Photomontage is the work that was the most about my own life and whatever concerned me at the time - love, work, style, war, loneliness, art.
For a long time I showed my paintings but not my montages. And because of this, I felt free to say whatever I wanted.
They started as work for fanzines, as messages to the masses, but over time became much more focused, sometimes more cryptic.
Sometimes I've used a lot of art history - for examples these pieces below, all made in 2007, were around Donald Judd, the Judd Montages. See more here.
The montages below with women and targets are all from 2008: (The full collection is here.)
Lovelake
Self Portrait, 1978