M. Ray 1986

Lenore Tawney made this collage called M. Ray from all sorts of scraps and bits of paper. She’s got this great way of layering things; it's like she's building a little world, piece by piece. The material quality here is key. You can almost feel the textures of the different papers, some smooth, some rough, some with faded print. See that little patch of blue right at the top? It's so vibrant against the muted tones of the rest of the collage. It's like a little burst of energy, holding the whole thing together. The way Tawney combines fragments of architecture with bits of text and abstract shapes reminds me that art is often about the process of bringing different elements into conversation with each other. You might think of Kurt Schwitters when looking at this piece. He’s another artist who knew how to make poetry from the everyday debris of the world. Ultimately, Tawney's collage invites us to see the world as a collection of fragments, always shifting, always reforming.