 Every morning, Exacto
knife in hand, Peter Jacobs sits down to read the
newspaper. When he finishes, two to three hours later,
the newspaper resembles Swiss cheese and the images
he has excised from it have been transformed into
a 9- by 12-inch collage. Every day since March 31,
2005, Jacobs has made a collage solely from that day’s
newspaper. He hasn’t missed a day, not even
when he travels. Collage has always
been the most natural visual language for me to formalize
expression. My ongoing daily practice “The Collage
Journal” has now reached 2 years and over 720
collages. It is integrated in my life as a meditation,
contemplation and re-evaluation process. It has become
very clear to me, that while the individual works
might be compelling, there is a greater strength and
depth when seen as an entire body of work. The power
of the media in creating cultural tastes, fears and
strengths are re-constructed in my collages creating
new visual and sociological landscapes. I abstract
small truths to build visual ambiguities without a
pre-determined narrative in mind. While grounded in
formal choices of color, rhythm, and figure-ground,
the images are layered with humor, symbolism and surreal
narratives. The Collage Journal challenges “cultural
correctness.” Disparate images of contemporary
icons and recognizable symbols are joined together
in new environments. These works can be seen as commentary,
but are also created with the intention of provoking
questions, not answers. There
is an inescapable momentum to this artist’s
project, and part of the excitement of his work is
the anticipation of what will come next; in the news,
in the art, and on the imaginative plain where the
two intersect.
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