Empty Mirror

a literary magazine

Six collages by hiromi suzuki

For me, making collages is the most fun. First of all, I will cut the pages from the 1960s fashion magazines and the Scientific American, and put them into an empty confectionery box. Then I take the images out of the box and edit my original stories. It seems to be making paper dolls and playing in fiction as same as my childhood. After studying literature at the college, … [Read more...]

Abstract Musings: Kelly Schaub’s mixed media collages

A theatre artist and administrator for over 25 years, two main influences from the theatre guide Schaub’s work in the visual arts arena. First, she has always been moved by the ephemeral aspect of a theatre experience. Each performance is different and will never be duplicated exactly ever again. Second is the collaborative nature of the theatre, where artists with a range of … [Read more...]

Certain People by Lita Kenyon

Lita Kenyon’s mixed media pieces offer hints at humanity translated through persistent, abstract shapes. Living and working in Tacoma, WA near Seattle, collage and drawing is a search for form and how to make forms with an element of surprise becalming the inexplicable, urgent and awkward. With a keen interest in process, particularly the process of exploring the space … [Read more...]

sophie anne edwards: Ice Poems

These poems were co-created with ice along the Kagawong River. A sheet of ice had broken off the bank and dropped into the river, leaving an exposed, flat ice ridge. I stood on the separated ice shelf below, shifting with the moving river, and penned the words with water-based ink. The ice did its thing. … [Read more...]

Four collages by Janina Aza Karpinska

I began using collage --- scraps torn from magazines, calendars, auction catalogues --- as part of a group exhibition featuring 'Icons' about 8 years ago, where I discovered my Polish-Ossetian roots came through in the rich colours and composition. Working so intuitively has made the process even quicker as I've learned to trust it more, I barely have to look at what I'm doing, … [Read more...]

Silas Plum: Cardboard Primitives

The question of value underpins everything. A decent meal. A romantic partner. Expressing vulnerability in an unfamiliar way. The right brand of rechargeable batteries. In every consideration, from the mundane to the profound, a risk/reward ratio is calculated. My work expresses and quantifies the subtle and insidious nature of constant calculation. By the conscious … [Read more...]

Four collages by Kon Markogiannis

A series of collages inspired by great artists of the past such as Kurt Schwitters. Bits and pieces of newspaper, calendar pages, and other discarded ephemera take on new life by being combined, juxtaposed and superimposed; through playful improvisation and experimentation, they form mysterious alliances proving that even the (seemingly) worthless can have value and meaning. … [Read more...]

Beatnik: Collages by Rebeka Elizegi

The series focuses on the Beat Generation as a cultural phenomenon, more specifically in the women poets who participated in the movement and who historically have had less visibility than their male colleagues. It is a tribute to those women poets, who have remained in the shadow in the history of literature. Beatnik is the derogatory term with which the conservative American … [Read more...]

Two collages and a poem by Steve Dalachinsky

The BARD (A Perfect Day #2) (for Allen Ginsberg) the Bard is Dead yet 76 yr. old Marvin Shapiro "homeless" still walks around shouting "...Cyanide metal poisoning. Cyanide metal poisoning. The Surgeon General blew it in my face." it's a cold-for-this-time-of-year afternoon & tonight i'll make another attempt at looking for the be-bop comet   We … [Read more...]

Artworks by Doren Robbins

My work is connected to the folk, DADA, and Surrealist traditions of collage, photomontage, and mixed-media works discussed in Herta Wescher's book Collage and Robert Motherwell's The DADA Painters and Poets. Duende is an incident of imagination. … [Read more...]

Four collages by Jack Felice

Each collage concerns itself with merging culture with the visual image. The pieces are intended to allow the audience enough space to create individual (and at times parallel) narratives. I am interested in the imperfections of found artwork and the importance of identity. … [Read more...]

Beyond the Moment: visual poetry by hiromi suzuki

There are old postcards and ephemeral photographs in my collection. Mediocre sceneries are in monochrome pictures. Anonymous people who were photographed are saying from the past, ― I am here ―. This series of visual poetry is made with old postcards. To say precisely, I will first photograph old pictures with a digital camera and output them. Photographs will be output leaving … [Read more...]

No Inherent Existence: mixed-media pieces by Hildy Maze

None of us can escape the habit of projecting thoughts and concepts onto reality itself— what Buddhists would call “pure perception”. But if we can access awareness of our inner, deeply ingrained conceptual biases, we can open new windows onto our mind. By contrast, when mind is immersed in uncontrolled emotions and mistaken, often self-preserving beliefs, we’re unable to see … [Read more...]

Mixed-media pieces by Cynthia Yachtman

I work primarily with acrylic and latex paints, inks, papers and charcoal. My images contain many diverse layers of meaning from the universal to the specific and personal. My works are often abstract. I am frequently interested in pattern and/or creating a rich sensual surface by making layer upon layer of marks. There is often an unseen history within these layers as images … [Read more...]

Rhed Fawell: Collage and Embroidery

My collages explore the deconstruction and reconstruction of images. The process allows me to play conceptually with a theme or thought. By deconstructing the original reality of an image, I can begin to let it tell a different story. Once I find my visual starting point, I will start a process of deconstruction/reconstruction, combining the use of ripping, cutting, layering, … [Read more...]

Calcutta: Photographs by Buku Sarkar

After seventeen years away, I've done something most Indians of my generation don't do---return back home. When people ask me where I'm from, I always stumble. I say, I was born in Calcutta but I grew up in New York. When you are young, your awareness of the larger city is limited. I have to admit, I know New York much more intimately than I feel I know Calcutta. Calcutta … [Read more...]

12 collages by Bill Wolak

I make collages out of all kinds of materials. Most are made out of paper engravings. Many collages are digitally generated or enhanced. To begin a piece, I select some sources—either color or black and white. If I’m using magazines or prints or old books, I cut out some images or parts of images that interest me. Then I start working on a background or some other sort of … [Read more...]

Screenpaintings by Shih Yun Yeo

The artist calls these paintings, created by a combined procedure of screen printing and painting, Screenpaintings. Silk screening technique, as it is used here, is not treating the silkscreen as a machine in Andy Warhol's days but as another type of artist's brush. Positive films are created when the artist paints on them using large Chinese brushes and ink. During the … [Read more...]

A Carving Process: Ripple by Dan Havel and Dean Ruck

I first saw Ripple on its opening night. Formally a residence in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston, Ripple is a sculpture created on site by Dan Havel and Dean Ruck who carved designs into the six-room, mid-century bungalow over seven months. Ripple was commissioned after the decision to not renovate the bungalow was made. I sat in a patio chair in the backyard for a half … [Read more...]

Divine Decay by Kon Markogiannis

Divine Decay is a series of photographic/mixed media constructions informed and inspired by holy texts, illuminated manuscripts, death memorials, sacred geometry, religious icons, and Renaissance panel paintings. The work deals with memory, remembrance, and decay and tackles issues such as spirituality which is often neglected but also essential for the well-being and inner … [Read more...]

Cy Twombly’s Lepanto Green

Someone has razed the house and hung its walls vandalized by a tormented resident. Standing back affronted, but scrutinizing the display nevertheless, twelve panels come into view as if roof, hallways, furniture, and floors of this dwelling has been shunted. These are walls, scrawled upon and dirtied by a frenzied hand. These are projections, gargantuan biographical Rorschach … [Read more...]

Visual poetry by Cam Scott: Spools/Burrs (for Clark Coolidge)

Influenced by copy art and zine making, my work uses the copier or scanner as a means of drawing, often adapting, or 'quoting,' a source of conceptual significance. In this, a nostalgic practice of the hand is allied to the borrowed rhythms of an all-but-outmoded means of mechanical reproduction. Excerpted here are two suites of elaboration and compression respectively, … [Read more...]

Joy of Water: visual poetry by hiromi suzuki

There is Tamagawa Aqueduct under the Daitabashi Station near the town where I live. The name of the place “Daitabashi” comes from "Daidarabotchi” as a giant in Japanese folklore. Daidarabotchi's huge footprints are said to have created lakes and ponds. I searched for historical materials of underground water in Tokyo, walked by side of the springwater and creeks. When I … [Read more...]

Memory of Place: 8 paintings by Nathalie Tierce

I start with ripping apart issues of Architectural Digest and create dozens of collages very quickly that I make to capture a certain mood. From these compositions, I select the few that I’ll develop into paintings. These are the paintings that make up “Memory of Place”. My emotional connection to an event or place is tied to the space where it happened. A room’s ceiling as … [Read more...]

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine which publishes new work each Friday.

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