Wading in Whitewater, Bill Wolak
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“A Moan Just Beyond Delirium”
Artist’s Statement, by William Wolak
Collage undresses the darkness with a mirror’s secret undertow. It’s a dance done on burning kites while dreaming at the speed of light.
Bill Wolak
Expectant as nakedness, collage is a door that surfaces in the shipwreck of your sleep. It’s a caress with the irresistible softness of a slipknot in a velvet blindfold. At its best, like poetry, collage is a moan just beyond delirium.
I make collages out of all kinds of materials. Most are made out of paper engravings. Many collages are digitally generated or enhanced.
I began making collages back in the late 1970s. While I was studying Comparative Literature with Nathaniel Tarn at Rutgers University, Tarn encouraged me to contact a friend of his, the British poet and collage artist John Digby. So I began to correspond with John. Later, I managed to visit him in London, and we traveled to Paris together to meet some surrealist poets and artists.
John Digby is mentor and teacher in both collage and poetry. His work has had a profound influence on mine over the over the thirty-eight years that we’ve been friends. John married Joan Digby, an American professor and poet who teaches at Long Island University Post, and they live in Oyster Bay, New York, where they established The Feral Press.
I write poems, translate poetry, make collages, and take photographs. The creative energy and drive for self expression is the same in all of the above; for me, it’s simply a question of what materials are at hand and where my attention is focused at any particular time. My first love is poetry, so that’s where I expend most of my time and creative energy.
William Wolak / Collages
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Links:
Fellowship of Reconciliation: http://forusa.org/content/william-wolak
Archaeology of Light:
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