CWOS Downtown (cue Petula Clark)

In the Downtown AIRS, "Butterfly Effect" by Aileen Ishmael, a mixed media work composed of collage, acrylic and copper foil:
Melanie Carr's work "explores the overlap of art and craft, celebrating the freedom from traditional household chores." Utilizing her "domestic skills"—baking, sewing or candy making—she creates geometric patterns. This colorful installation, "Floor Bumps," was comprised of cheesecloth, ink, stiffener, staples, remnants and a golf shirt (!):
Brian Huff told me he does "very minimal collage. I think with collage, people can go overboard and try and layer too much and too many themes." Huff likes to "use [1950's] images as a base theme of conservatiosm and the American Dream. And now we're lost. Where is this American Dream? We're lost. It's such a mishmash."

For "Pompeii," Huff used a New York Times obituary page as the base—this one has death notices for the socialite Brooke Astor—pasting over the type images of running children from a school reader dating back to the early 196o's. Huff finds that newspaper pages—obits, stock quotes—with their lines and grids offer a platform for creating the illusion of depth and perspective. Thick gesso near the top interspersed with buttons adds an unstable element to the composition.

"What I also like to go with, a common theme of mine, is the curiosity of children. They have their faces and they are joyous, but they are running down a path into this storm. And maybe they'll come out unscathed on the other side but you don't know," said Huff. This type of collage allows—invites—the viewer to project their own meaning onto it. I saw the juxtaposition of the running children and the yellowing obit page to be a commentary on mortality and the fleeting nature of youth.