I love the collages made by Charlotte Kaplan, and wish she was better known. Living on Staten Island, she was an art therapist working with the seriously mentally challenged until her recent retirement in 2018. That is when she turned to collage. I think her design sense and composition just soar in these. I’m grateful she is active on the Collage Artists of American Facebook group or I would have never been introduced to her work.
Like me, Charlotte has also found fascination with including monoprints in her collage, which is a technique I often teach. Unlike me, however, she doesn’t make all of her papers. She also includes magazines, typeface, and old book pages, and a bit of drawing. Check out some of her gorgeous work in this post.
You can follow her on Instagram here. You can also watch a short video interview of her (two parts: part one is here, and part 2 is here) where you can see her working a bit. You can note she’s working with a glue stick, and not the messier acrylic medium I use, which I found interesting. This approach makes collage an easy entrance point for someone just starting out. In the video, if you are watching closely, she also demonstrates a useful tracing paper technique you might find helpful.
I hope you give collage a try if you have not already. It is very satisfying and peacefully contemplative medium to work in.