Artist Statement

I describe my work as Mixed-Media Photo Collage. Using my own original photographic images as the basis for three-dimensional constructions, I create novel art pieces that ask viewers to consider once again common and ordinary things that are too rapidly disappearing from view.

As a youngster growing up in Decatur (IL), I studied art privately for eight years with a number of teachers at Millikin University. In 1969, following undergrad and graduate degrees in music education at the University of Illinois, I moved to the Chicago area to begin a 33-year career as a high school music and theatre educator. There I began to photograph subjects to paint in my spare time, but started exhibiting original framed photographic images. In 1983, I began to merge photography and painting, constructing three-dimensional mixed-media collage pieces that combine original photographic images and found objects with airbrush and traditional painting techniques.

The process begins by laying out a number of images, arranging and rearranging them until they select themselves for inclusion in the piece. Some of the photographs are mounted on foam board to give the work the illusion of having depth, while others lay flat on the surface. They are then cut out and collaged with vintage blueprints, wood, wire, paper, stamps, paint, colored pencil or other found items that enhance the feeling the images themselves impart. The completed pieces are then titled and framed under glass in canvas-depth molding, assembled in antique boxes or drawers as three-dimensional collage constructions or are mounted on painted canvas supports.

The viewers are "invited" to see the familiar, a bit of whimsy and some nostalgia in their experience with the work. I share my work at shows and festivals in the area and am currently an exhibiting artist at the SAAG Gallery at the LaEncantada Mall in Tucson. For more information, see my website at www.philsmith-photoart.com or at the Southern Arizona Arts Guild website and follow me on Facebook at Phil Smith - Photoarts and Instagram at ps410.