VIRTUAL COLLAGE GALLERY BEST-IN-SHOW:

Suspension by Britt Gerhard

Britt Gerhard's collage Suspension was selected by the Museum's fans on Facebook as the most popular collage in the Virtual Gallery. Upon selecting it as a finalist, guest juror William Klenk referred to Suspension as "a DADAesque combination of imagery held by a bold circular shape and an incongruous landscape".

Britt is a San Francisco based freelance graphic designer. She is currently working towards her MFA in Web Design & New Media at the Academy of Art, San Francisco.

Britt Gerhard Suspension Adobe Photoshop 20.5 x 25.5 inches

Here is what Britt had to say about Suspension:

I became fascinated by vintage ephemera, especially images involving figures and movement. The central figure is Annette Kellerman, an Australian swimmer who was popular in the early 1900s. I found a bookplate featuring her various diving positions, scanned it, and cut out the figure using Adobe Photoshop. I then combined Kellerman with a series of historic creative common imagery, including a 1910 architectural drawing of the Leaning Tower of Pisa from the Brooklyn Museum and a 1900 Norwegian photochrom print of the Seven Sister mountain range from the Library of Congress. To add texture, I used images of cloth, graph paper, and wood.

Ultimately, I wanted the viewer to experience a sense of both movement and structure by combining a diverse array of natural, architectural, and humanistic elements.

Thank you to all those who submitted to the Virtual Collage Gallery and congratulations Britt!


Coming in April to the Virtual Gallery: "Art that Works"