description
“All the world’s a stage” as Shakespeare coined. We’re going to work a bit smaller than that…let’s see if a matchbox can be a stage as well. We are going to find out. In this class we will use these tiny vessels to house little scenes or vignettes. The cast of characters will include tiny little men from model train sets or architect models. Using a mixture of collage and assemblage we will create little realms for these Lilliputians to dwell in. While we are at it we may even change our little dudes…perhaps wings, perhaps giving them a snake body…their world is in your hands…literally.
Michael deMeng is an assemblage artist whose work is heavily influenced by Latin American art forms such as retablos, ex votos, and milagros. Born in Southern California, he now works and resides in Missoula "the cultural Mecca of Montana". He exhibits and teaches throughout the world, promoting the alchemy of transforming trash to treasure.
Artist Statement:
My work is about transformations. It is about the transformation of the common into the sacred. Discarded materials find new and unexpected uses in my work; they are reassembled and conjoined with unlikely components, a form of rebirth from the ashes into new life and new meaning. These assemblages are metaphors for the evolutions and revolutions of existence: from life to death to rebirth, from new to old to renewed, from construction to destruction to reconstruction. These forms are examinations of the world in perpetual flux, where meaning and function are ever changing.
