"My World in Collage" Arts Night Out with Akinbo Akinnuoye

Start: Aug. 14, 2015, 9 p.m.

End: Aug. 15, 2015, midnight

Collages inspired by life, dreams, and news in living color.

I like working with images in unexpected ways. Some work tells a story, while others are whims of immediate subconscious. Much of my work is a commentary on culture and how the subjects of my works interact with the environments that I have created for them. Color and perspective play a major role.

I have been working mostly in collage for 15 years. Despite other artistic pursuits (film,woodworking), I’ve always done collages—some as gift wrap. I figured even if it’s a bad gift, friends and family would recognize the effort that went into the gift wrap I made. Collage has also been therapeutic for me, bringing a certain harmony to an unlikely assortment of images and events.

After the recent economic crisis, I reevaluated what I wanted for myself artistically. I realized that I wanted to do something for me, instead of maintaining other people's works through art restoration. However, I wouldn’t mind my work being preserved for the ages—ironically, the work that began as discarded refuse before I re-purposed it.

I want the viewer to look at the selected collages as dreamscapes, with vivid color use and play on perspective and scale that dreams offer. I wanted to recreate the way the mind alters what it deems important for its own "reality" and present it with some kind of narrative. Although you may see only one scene or place, the mind creates multiple interpretations.