Interview with Collage Artist, Molly Dunham
We are honored that collage artist Molly Dunham created all of the art to accompany the work we’ve chosen for the July 2020 re-launch of West Trestle Review. In mid-June, I spoke with Dunham to get her perspective on collage, her identity as a maker and artist, and the themes that drive her art.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
OJ: How or when did you become an artist?
MD: Good question, because that’s such a big step, at least in my own journey: When do I get to call myself an artist? I’ve been struggling for years to identify with that label. Even though I’ve been “making art” for years, probably since my first art class in seventh grade. I took art classes throughout high school, and my mom would always tell me, “You should be an artist,” and the only thing I imagined art being was painting pictures of flowers [laughs]. It was a very limited definition based on what I was exposed to. It wasn’t until my kids were younger that I considered myself a maker – more than an artist – and I did a lot of fiber arts and crochet. My mind works in a way that I can make up crochet patterns; I could make up a pattern in my mind and turn it into a crocheted object, which I think is pretty cool. Then the art of collage came to me a little over a year ago. A friend invited me to a collage club at her library, where the library provided all of the materials and we would sit down at a big table and make collages using an online prompt from Collage Society.
OJ: So would you say you still don’t refer to yourself as an artist?
MD: It’s been only in the last couple of months that I have tested out saying, “I’m an artist.”
That’s a big leap, for me. Part of what allowed me to do that was I had to actually sell a few pieces of art. I thought well if I can sell art, then I can legitimately call myself an artist.
OJ: So you were able to sell some pieces?
MD: I was. A funny aside: About three years ago, I was commissioned by a friend to make a painting for her. I “made” the painting and sold it to her, and I look back and wonder why couldn’t I identify as an artist then. A couple months ago I thought, “OK, it’s time,” and I put some pieces up for sale on Instagram. I made three or four pieces within a couple of days, and they sold within hours of posting. So I’m like, “OK, do you need more affirmation? [Laughs] Can you just do this?”
OJ: Yeah, claim it! So you do painting, and other forms of art, but collage . . .
MD: Collage is my main squeeze, yeah.
OJ: What about collage speaks to you?
MD: A few things: for one, it’s fast. And you can do it if you can cut and paste [laughs]. Like everything I learned in kindergarten, you know, prepared me for work as a collage artist. Other artistic things that I’ve done require more skill and more patience. But a collage, I think of in terms of using images to illustrate my thoughts, and the speed of thoughts is super fast. The speed of collage works for that method, for me to illustrate what I’m thinking and feeling in a moment. I can go out to my studio and pull images together because I know what my materials are, and I have a lot of resources out there, and I’ve categorized a lot of subject matter. I can zoom in, and I want a picture of the universe, and I want an image of a woman, or something like this, and within minutes I’ve created the thing that I was thinking about.
OJ: How do you usually find the images, do you have a lot of magazines, or books?
MD: Yes, I have a lot of both. Probably eighteen years ago, I was drawn to multimedia. There was a display at the coffee shop with some multimedia art on the wall, a collage or something, and I thought, “I really want to make something out of that.” I cut out a few images of things that came in junk mail, or catalogs, and I kept them in a tiny box. I didn’t quite understand where to get more images. It never occurred to me to cut a part of a magazine, or go to a used bookstore, or a thrift store, and buy books, and cut them up. That was a mental leap I didn’t make until I started going to collage club, and then I realized that I have a lot of books, I go to a lot of thrift stores, I love used book stores, and I could just start buying the books to make the art. Once my friends found out, I received a flood of magazines. Everyone texts me, calls me, “I have all these magazines, want them?” Somebody in our social circle passed away, and I inherited years’ worth of National Geographic, which is really a treasure trove for most collage artists.
OJ: Do you usually have a specific idea you want to convey or does it kind of come to you after the images?
MD: A little bit of both. Sometimes I feel as if my pieces come together without any thought. I’m just the vessel to make this combination of images. There are certain collages that feel like they practically make themselves. Part of that is because I’m familiar with my image bank, so probably on a subconscious level, I have images floating in my head, maybe things being teased together that come together then when I sit down to do the work. Other times I do have a specific message that I want to convey, and I’ll go hunting for the images to make that.
OJ: Are there specific themes in your work or messages you want to convey?
MD: One of the things that is most important to me is equality, so that’s at the root of a lot of what I make, not just human equality, but equality with all living things, and with the earth we live on. When I look through my work, a lot of images are about empowering or empowered women. Loving on and valuing children comes up, as well as animals and bugs [laughs]. How we love on our natural resources and live in harmony with the earth is something that drives me, and also is something fundamental to collage because collage is essentially recycling. I’m taking one person’s garbage, and turning it into art – old magazines that would end up in the garbage, landfill, now they have a new life.
OJ: What do you find rewarding about your work?
MD: A lot of my work doesn’t have an end product [laughs]. You know, as a mother, well your kids grow up and then they leave, and I guess that’s a finished product in a way, but a lot of the unpaid labor that I spend a good chunk of my time doing has to get done again tomorrow and the next day, so I really love having the finished, tangible product I can hold in my hands at the end of a session in the studio. I also really love the way it has expanded my interaction with people, because I post a lot on my Instagram, and a lot of my friends and family see it. I love how it draws us into conversation, not just online, but when I see them in person. We talk about the image that I’ve made, or something I’ve written to go with the image, and it just leads to conversations that I would never have otherwise.
OJ: Do you ever think about doing a larger project, or have you already done a larger project with all of the collages that you’ve made?
MD: That’s a concern of mine because if something happens to me, I wonder what my kids are going to do with it all. I probably have more than 1,000 collages made that are sitting in drawers in my studio. My fantasy would be to have a gallery show one day. I would love the opportunity to do some illustrations for some sort of print. A book cover would be … [raises her arms in exultation].
OJ: Do you see yourself moving on one day from collages?
MD: Maybe growing on that platform. I‘ve always loved mixed media, so maybe adding more paint, or layers to the collages.
OJ: Is there something specific about the WTR that made you feel like, “I would like to have my work represented here”?
MD: Of course it’s a new opportunity, a new platform, to share my work, and I like Tricia [laughs]. And also because, when I share my work online, I share it usually with what I call a mini essay, whatever I can fit into a caption on Instagram, and I have always loved the combination of images with words. This platform lends to that, in combining my images with somebody else’s words. Usually it’s me combining my images with my words.
OJ: Right, it adds a different twist to it, or it opens up the art to everyone to kind of put their interpretations on it.
MD: Exactly, because everybody who reads a poem or sees a picture is going to see something different based on their experience, so that’s exciting. There are collages that I make where someone sees something in it that I didn’t even see myself, and it’s not until they point out this one detail that I’m like, “Oh, I didn’t even see that, but thank you.”
OJ: Do you usually join the conversation about what others see?
MD: I do. I’m pretty transparent. Sometimes I can’t believe I didn't see what they see. Sometimes it becomes obvious. So much of art in general works on a subliminal level, and collage especially is subversive, so there’s that running underneath, and sometimes we need someone else to point it out.
OJ: You have about 1300 followers on Instagram. Are most of them local or are they from all over?
MD: They're kind of from all over. I've been on Instagram for four or five years, and I was right in that 500 range of followers for a long time. Once I started collaging, that’s when my audience grew because I figured out how to use hashtags. I tapped into the fact that there’s a huge online Instagram collage society that I didn’t know existed, so I’ve grown my audience quite a bit in the past year through using collage- and art-related hashtags and going into that circle and finding connections, following each other. I also participate in several collage-related challenges. Some of them are weekly challenges or a monthly theme. There's one called Februlage during the month of February, and they have a different prompt every day of the month. Not only did that introduce me to a lot of artists, they selected some of my pieces to go onto their site, which exposed me to a new audience.
OJ: Do you ever bounce ideas off of different collage artists?
MD: I would like to do more of that. Usually I create within my own little Molly bubble. I find that I’m very easily influenced by the art of others, so I as an artist have to be cautious. I would never want to plagiarize, of course, somebody’s art, or be seen as stealing somebody’s style, but I love experimenting with different styles. Because I’m so new to collage and to calling myself an artist in general, I definitely see myself as doing a self-directed art school—at home, by myself. Some of the pieces are my homework, and I get to share from my little self-directed, self-homeschool art class, but it would be fun to do collaborations.
OJ: If you’re in art school now, what would be your graduation?
MD: Maybe a gallery show, or even displaying a collection at a local coffee shop, would be a little bit of a completion of something. Once I ask, it would probably happen, so just taking that step in that direction.
OJ: Do you have pieces in mind that are favorites?
MD: I have a series that I am rather in love with of black-and-white nudes of women, tastefully covered, and placed inside body cavities—a close-up of a heart or intestines, for example. They’re almost the inverse of [the piece that accompanies Beverly Burch’s poem, “Loose Sonnet with Uncertain Tracks,”] where you have a woman inside the body. That series is really special to me because it’s about embodiment. It’s been an important process that I’ve gone through in the last few years. Re-learning how to occupy my body and not having any sort of perceived separation of mind, body, spirit. That series is a visual representation of the journey that I’ve been on as a woman with a human body.
OJ: What do you mean by embodiment, exactly?
MD: There have been a lot of forces in my life that have separated me from my body. Growing up in a religion where I had to live a spiritual life of the mind, or the spirit, the body was an inconvenient, human thing that was somehow inherently sinful. So undoing a lot of that conditioning. The body is not a bad, or sinful thing, but a beautiful instrument. To be used to make art!
OJ: Thank you for speaking with me!
MD: Thank you!
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
OJ: How or when did you become an artist?
MD: Good question, because that’s such a big step, at least in my own journey: When do I get to call myself an artist? I’ve been struggling for years to identify with that label. Even though I’ve been “making art” for years, probably since my first art class in seventh grade. I took art classes throughout high school, and my mom would always tell me, “You should be an artist,” and the only thing I imagined art being was painting pictures of flowers [laughs]. It was a very limited definition based on what I was exposed to. It wasn’t until my kids were younger that I considered myself a maker – more than an artist – and I did a lot of fiber arts and crochet. My mind works in a way that I can make up crochet patterns; I could make up a pattern in my mind and turn it into a crocheted object, which I think is pretty cool. Then the art of collage came to me a little over a year ago. A friend invited me to a collage club at her library, where the library provided all of the materials and we would sit down at a big table and make collages using an online prompt from Collage Society.
OJ: So would you say you still don’t refer to yourself as an artist?
MD: It’s been only in the last couple of months that I have tested out saying, “I’m an artist.”
That’s a big leap, for me. Part of what allowed me to do that was I had to actually sell a few pieces of art. I thought well if I can sell art, then I can legitimately call myself an artist.
OJ: So you were able to sell some pieces?
MD: I was. A funny aside: About three years ago, I was commissioned by a friend to make a painting for her. I “made” the painting and sold it to her, and I look back and wonder why couldn’t I identify as an artist then. A couple months ago I thought, “OK, it’s time,” and I put some pieces up for sale on Instagram. I made three or four pieces within a couple of days, and they sold within hours of posting. So I’m like, “OK, do you need more affirmation? [Laughs] Can you just do this?”
OJ: Yeah, claim it! So you do painting, and other forms of art, but collage . . .
MD: Collage is my main squeeze, yeah.
OJ: What about collage speaks to you?
MD: A few things: for one, it’s fast. And you can do it if you can cut and paste [laughs]. Like everything I learned in kindergarten, you know, prepared me for work as a collage artist. Other artistic things that I’ve done require more skill and more patience. But a collage, I think of in terms of using images to illustrate my thoughts, and the speed of thoughts is super fast. The speed of collage works for that method, for me to illustrate what I’m thinking and feeling in a moment. I can go out to my studio and pull images together because I know what my materials are, and I have a lot of resources out there, and I’ve categorized a lot of subject matter. I can zoom in, and I want a picture of the universe, and I want an image of a woman, or something like this, and within minutes I’ve created the thing that I was thinking about.
OJ: How do you usually find the images, do you have a lot of magazines, or books?
MD: Yes, I have a lot of both. Probably eighteen years ago, I was drawn to multimedia. There was a display at the coffee shop with some multimedia art on the wall, a collage or something, and I thought, “I really want to make something out of that.” I cut out a few images of things that came in junk mail, or catalogs, and I kept them in a tiny box. I didn’t quite understand where to get more images. It never occurred to me to cut a part of a magazine, or go to a used bookstore, or a thrift store, and buy books, and cut them up. That was a mental leap I didn’t make until I started going to collage club, and then I realized that I have a lot of books, I go to a lot of thrift stores, I love used book stores, and I could just start buying the books to make the art. Once my friends found out, I received a flood of magazines. Everyone texts me, calls me, “I have all these magazines, want them?” Somebody in our social circle passed away, and I inherited years’ worth of National Geographic, which is really a treasure trove for most collage artists.
OJ: Do you usually have a specific idea you want to convey or does it kind of come to you after the images?
MD: A little bit of both. Sometimes I feel as if my pieces come together without any thought. I’m just the vessel to make this combination of images. There are certain collages that feel like they practically make themselves. Part of that is because I’m familiar with my image bank, so probably on a subconscious level, I have images floating in my head, maybe things being teased together that come together then when I sit down to do the work. Other times I do have a specific message that I want to convey, and I’ll go hunting for the images to make that.
OJ: Are there specific themes in your work or messages you want to convey?
MD: One of the things that is most important to me is equality, so that’s at the root of a lot of what I make, not just human equality, but equality with all living things, and with the earth we live on. When I look through my work, a lot of images are about empowering or empowered women. Loving on and valuing children comes up, as well as animals and bugs [laughs]. How we love on our natural resources and live in harmony with the earth is something that drives me, and also is something fundamental to collage because collage is essentially recycling. I’m taking one person’s garbage, and turning it into art – old magazines that would end up in the garbage, landfill, now they have a new life.
OJ: What do you find rewarding about your work?
MD: A lot of my work doesn’t have an end product [laughs]. You know, as a mother, well your kids grow up and then they leave, and I guess that’s a finished product in a way, but a lot of the unpaid labor that I spend a good chunk of my time doing has to get done again tomorrow and the next day, so I really love having the finished, tangible product I can hold in my hands at the end of a session in the studio. I also really love the way it has expanded my interaction with people, because I post a lot on my Instagram, and a lot of my friends and family see it. I love how it draws us into conversation, not just online, but when I see them in person. We talk about the image that I’ve made, or something I’ve written to go with the image, and it just leads to conversations that I would never have otherwise.
OJ: Do you ever think about doing a larger project, or have you already done a larger project with all of the collages that you’ve made?
MD: That’s a concern of mine because if something happens to me, I wonder what my kids are going to do with it all. I probably have more than 1,000 collages made that are sitting in drawers in my studio. My fantasy would be to have a gallery show one day. I would love the opportunity to do some illustrations for some sort of print. A book cover would be … [raises her arms in exultation].
OJ: Do you see yourself moving on one day from collages?
MD: Maybe growing on that platform. I‘ve always loved mixed media, so maybe adding more paint, or layers to the collages.
OJ: Is there something specific about the WTR that made you feel like, “I would like to have my work represented here”?
MD: Of course it’s a new opportunity, a new platform, to share my work, and I like Tricia [laughs]. And also because, when I share my work online, I share it usually with what I call a mini essay, whatever I can fit into a caption on Instagram, and I have always loved the combination of images with words. This platform lends to that, in combining my images with somebody else’s words. Usually it’s me combining my images with my words.
OJ: Right, it adds a different twist to it, or it opens up the art to everyone to kind of put their interpretations on it.
MD: Exactly, because everybody who reads a poem or sees a picture is going to see something different based on their experience, so that’s exciting. There are collages that I make where someone sees something in it that I didn’t even see myself, and it’s not until they point out this one detail that I’m like, “Oh, I didn’t even see that, but thank you.”
OJ: Do you usually join the conversation about what others see?
MD: I do. I’m pretty transparent. Sometimes I can’t believe I didn't see what they see. Sometimes it becomes obvious. So much of art in general works on a subliminal level, and collage especially is subversive, so there’s that running underneath, and sometimes we need someone else to point it out.
OJ: You have about 1300 followers on Instagram. Are most of them local or are they from all over?
MD: They're kind of from all over. I've been on Instagram for four or five years, and I was right in that 500 range of followers for a long time. Once I started collaging, that’s when my audience grew because I figured out how to use hashtags. I tapped into the fact that there’s a huge online Instagram collage society that I didn’t know existed, so I’ve grown my audience quite a bit in the past year through using collage- and art-related hashtags and going into that circle and finding connections, following each other. I also participate in several collage-related challenges. Some of them are weekly challenges or a monthly theme. There's one called Februlage during the month of February, and they have a different prompt every day of the month. Not only did that introduce me to a lot of artists, they selected some of my pieces to go onto their site, which exposed me to a new audience.
OJ: Do you ever bounce ideas off of different collage artists?
MD: I would like to do more of that. Usually I create within my own little Molly bubble. I find that I’m very easily influenced by the art of others, so I as an artist have to be cautious. I would never want to plagiarize, of course, somebody’s art, or be seen as stealing somebody’s style, but I love experimenting with different styles. Because I’m so new to collage and to calling myself an artist in general, I definitely see myself as doing a self-directed art school—at home, by myself. Some of the pieces are my homework, and I get to share from my little self-directed, self-homeschool art class, but it would be fun to do collaborations.
OJ: If you’re in art school now, what would be your graduation?
MD: Maybe a gallery show, or even displaying a collection at a local coffee shop, would be a little bit of a completion of something. Once I ask, it would probably happen, so just taking that step in that direction.
OJ: Do you have pieces in mind that are favorites?
MD: I have a series that I am rather in love with of black-and-white nudes of women, tastefully covered, and placed inside body cavities—a close-up of a heart or intestines, for example. They’re almost the inverse of [the piece that accompanies Beverly Burch’s poem, “Loose Sonnet with Uncertain Tracks,”] where you have a woman inside the body. That series is really special to me because it’s about embodiment. It’s been an important process that I’ve gone through in the last few years. Re-learning how to occupy my body and not having any sort of perceived separation of mind, body, spirit. That series is a visual representation of the journey that I’ve been on as a woman with a human body.
OJ: What do you mean by embodiment, exactly?
MD: There have been a lot of forces in my life that have separated me from my body. Growing up in a religion where I had to live a spiritual life of the mind, or the spirit, the body was an inconvenient, human thing that was somehow inherently sinful. So undoing a lot of that conditioning. The body is not a bad, or sinful thing, but a beautiful instrument. To be used to make art!
OJ: Thank you for speaking with me!
MD: Thank you!
Molly Dunham rediscovered paper, scissors, and glue after a long hiatus following kindergarten. She is inspired to breathe new life into old books and periodicals through deconstruction and reconstruction. With the view that art is a pre-verbal form of communication, Molly seeks to express through art ideas and feelings that cannot be easily said with words, and sometimes what she didn’t realize she needed to express before sitting down to cut and paste. She lives in Northern California with her husband, two kids, and a dog who follows her everywhere.
Art: Molly Dunham
Powered by Women