Tuesday, July 03, 2007


We have been teaching collage quite a bit lately. It's one of my favorite mediums to work in. The great thing about teaching, is that it gives you a chance to go back and look at fabulous work from the past.

Gary and I along with our collaborative artist friends took a moment off to go to the Phoenix Art Museum and see the film "How to Draw A Bunny". It's a film about Ray Johnson who has been called New York's most famous unknown artist of the Pop Art era. The fim documents his life as the founder of mail art and a collagist through interviews with other artists including Christo, Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein and others.

I was really blown away with his work and how eccentric & indifferent he was. He was a fixture on the New York scene and heralded as an innovator by the heroes-to-be of Pop and Fluxus. His address book read like a pop/fluxus art who's who--Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Willem DeKooning, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Buckminister Fuller, etc. But in the end, it seemed like no one really knew him. I'm sure you might recognize his work.

You can read more about him at The Estate of Ray Johnson.