This collage artist has been making art with the same image for years
'If there's a book I really like, I'll read it many times. Every time you read it, you change'
Vancouver artist Joseph Staples has made one image into a multi-year inspiration and source for his collage art, cutting it into pieces over and over again and creating new works. "I kept cutting out the same shapes over and over again," he says of how the project began. "I just sat down for like two weeks and just cut out the same shapes."
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Staples sees this kind of work as creating a "vocabulary" from the source material. "It's more of an arrangement, a composition — getting away from what it it actually is." At this point the image has become somewhat abstract: "I mean, I don't think about this image anymore — I think about the pieces and, like, how do I change that into something that it hasn't been before?"
He compares the process to what many people do with their favourite books. "If there's a book I really like, I'll read it many times. Every time you read it, you change. Every time I come back to these, I'm a little bit different; my attitude's a little bit different."
See more more of Joseph Staples's work below:
Art Minute is a CBC Arts series taking you inside the minds of Canadian artists to hear what makes them tick and the ideas behind their work.