Annie Stone

Artist's Biography

I started making collages by accident in a way. I had purchased, used and saved wolf calendars for several years. I identified or had an affinity for wolves. They are community/family oriented, are faithful and loving creatures, are misunderstood and persecuted. Coming across these calendars during a “purge” I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them when it occurred to me to cut the images out and assemble them in a way that was meaningful to me. I actually sat on the floor spreading everything out when I first began. I have since moved from the floor to tables and have made collages using images of all kinds of flora and fauna. My process is not necessarily an intellectual or entirely conscious one. I often choose images that I have a visceral reaction to and just know I want to work with them. I have a relatively good visual memory and begin to think about images that I want to put together. It sometimes works out, sometimes not, which then creates the hunt through my collection of resources for what feels and looks right to me. I never know when I begin a collage what it will look like in the end, I only know there is a sense of something I want to communicate.

My belated textile design education served me well as everything came together when I began cutting images from the public domain, calendars, magazines, books and catalogues and began putting them together in ways that reminded me of doing puzzles, weaving and knitting, as well as reflecting my love of color and pattern. In combination with my love of lace as well as my love of animals and all of nature, I began a very unique process of making collages that I found very satisfying because it tapped into my creativity in a way that nothing else had up until then and the rest is history.