March 2024 Featured Artist
Using Collage as Social Commentary:
The Art of Sally Beth Edelstein
Sally Beth Edelstein
Photo Courtesy: Sally Beth Edelstein |
Sally Beth Edelstein is an award-winning New York-based collage artist and writer who considers herself a visual archeologist digging deep into American mythology, excavating and examining the social fictions we as a society have subscribed to over the past 70 years.
An incurable collector of vintage ephemera, she utilizes imagery found in her collection for her hand-cut collages, drawing heavily on popular culture and how it both informs our identities and fragments it. A nationally exhibited artist who received her BFA from School of Visual Arts, her work has been shown at Arlington Art Museum, Museum of Sonoma County, Brown University, Heckscher Museum of Art, and Sally was recently the featured artist at The Art Center of Highland Park. She has been a guest lecturer on postwar American Culture at Fordham University and the New School for Social Research in New York City. Through both text and illustration her blog, Envisioning the American Dream, probes the ways that advertising and media steer our perceptions of race, class and gender. Her essays have appeared in The Ethel, NY Daily News, Ms. magazine, Independent, Next Avenue, and Kveller. She is the author and illustrator of This Year’s Girl (Doubleday) a book that visually documents the changes women have experienced through the 1950s and 80s told through the prism of ever-changing styles and consumer choices. "My work is a satirical critique of pop culture. I tell a story from the fractured place we are in. I want people to think about the messages they’re taking in." ~ Sally Beth Edelstein |
Blonde American Style
Collage ~ 20 x 19 inches
© Sally Beth Edelstein
Collage ~ 20 x 19 inches
© Sally Beth Edelstein
Sally Beth Edelstein, who knew she wanted to be an artist from the age of three (more on that later), calls herself “a visual archeologist and protector of our past.” Deciding to focus on collage about 25 years ago, she says she “tells stories about social fictions” using ephemera dating from just after World War II to the 1980s.
“My house is a home for orphaned paper,” she says, and the vast collection she has lovingly amassed, curated, and cataloged in her Long Island, New York, basement attests to that. Her work deals with how media (social and otherwise) and advertising affect the way we perceive the world. Using vintage images that reference race, gender, the environment, gun violence, and other social issues, she offers perceptive social commentary through lively and often large visual means.
“My house is a home for orphaned paper,” she says, and the vast collection she has lovingly amassed, curated, and cataloged in her Long Island, New York, basement attests to that. Her work deals with how media (social and otherwise) and advertising affect the way we perceive the world. Using vintage images that reference race, gender, the environment, gun violence, and other social issues, she offers perceptive social commentary through lively and often large visual means.
Sally recently spoke with Carol Lippert Gray, Sanctuary’s associate editor, about her work.
You knew you were an artist very early on. I was very shy and didn’t speak until I was about three years old, so art was my way of communicating without words. Even then, I realized women were not successful in the art world, and so I wanted to be Pierre the Parisian artist. I wore a beret and a mustache. My mother supported me completely. When I was 16, my mother saw me hunched over my work in my room and built me an art studio in our house. Using paper comes naturally, too. I come from a family that’s very sentimental about saving objects on paper. My maternal grandmother saved everything, so that’s what I knew. As a child, there were many things that came my way, including newspapers. By the 1970s and ‘80s, I’d go to flea markets and get stuff. My mother went to tag sales and would get stuff for me. I kept it and knew the value of it all these years. How large of a collection are we talking about? When I moved [to my present home several years ago], there were 700 boxes. I have 50,000 magazines, toys, books, and ephemera. |
Growing Up and Liking It
Collage ~ 48 x 58 inches © Sally Beth Edelstein |
What drives your work?
My work is a satirical critique of pop culture. I tell a story from the fractured place we are in. I want people to think about the messages they’re taking in.
I’m very interested in myths in advertising and what is portrayed. What are they trying to tell us? What are they trying to sell us? I look at race, gender, and sexuality, put them all together, and my collages form. I need to look at what I grew up with and what I ingested. This informs the way I see things.
My work is a satirical critique of pop culture. I tell a story from the fractured place we are in. I want people to think about the messages they’re taking in.
I’m very interested in myths in advertising and what is portrayed. What are they trying to tell us? What are they trying to sell us? I look at race, gender, and sexuality, put them all together, and my collages form. I need to look at what I grew up with and what I ingested. This informs the way I see things.
What would you like to share about your process?
I start with a thought. I’m more like a writer conceptually, and I might even write about it first. I have a photographic memory and will access pieces and put them together to tell a story.
In some, I’ve used the actual image. Some are reproductions, and I don’t destroy the original. (No actual vintage image is ever harmed in the process.) And some I’ve manipulated and enlarged. They’re about fragmentation, and that’s what led me to collage. My collages are not produced digitally but are all hand-cut paper using an exacto knife and scissors. Some of my pieces are 8 feet in length and can be several hundred images. Some are so tiny that I often wear a jeweler’s headband magnifier.
I start with a thought. I’m more like a writer conceptually, and I might even write about it first. I have a photographic memory and will access pieces and put them together to tell a story.
In some, I’ve used the actual image. Some are reproductions, and I don’t destroy the original. (No actual vintage image is ever harmed in the process.) And some I’ve manipulated and enlarged. They’re about fragmentation, and that’s what led me to collage. My collages are not produced digitally but are all hand-cut paper using an exacto knife and scissors. Some of my pieces are 8 feet in length and can be several hundred images. Some are so tiny that I often wear a jeweler’s headband magnifier.
Your interests have expanded to many mediums now.
I started out doing editorial illustration for magazines like New York and Business Week. I wrote a book called This Year’s Girl for Doubleday in 1985 documenting all the changes for women from the 1950s to the ’80s through the format of paper dolls.
I do write and I also [create] videos. My expression expands to incorporate different things.
Is there anything you’d like to say about your blog?
Envisioning the American Dream is an amalgam of memoir, history, and social commentary filled with vintage illustrations, ephemera, and advertising. It looks at how the American Dream was sold to us but probes the ways that advertising and media steer our perceptions of race, class and gender. It relates to current events and to past ones, infusing it with often unknown history to suggest a different perspective.
Where do you find sanctuary?
My dog Moe is my sanctuary, and I’m offering him sanctuary. He was a rescue from a tumultuous home. It’s a primal concept for both of us. As a child, art was my sanctuary. Absorbing myself in my artwork, drawing and painting, protected me from the chaos of my house.
I started out doing editorial illustration for magazines like New York and Business Week. I wrote a book called This Year’s Girl for Doubleday in 1985 documenting all the changes for women from the 1950s to the ’80s through the format of paper dolls.
I do write and I also [create] videos. My expression expands to incorporate different things.
Is there anything you’d like to say about your blog?
Envisioning the American Dream is an amalgam of memoir, history, and social commentary filled with vintage illustrations, ephemera, and advertising. It looks at how the American Dream was sold to us but probes the ways that advertising and media steer our perceptions of race, class and gender. It relates to current events and to past ones, infusing it with often unknown history to suggest a different perspective.
Where do you find sanctuary?
My dog Moe is my sanctuary, and I’m offering him sanctuary. He was a rescue from a tumultuous home. It’s a primal concept for both of us. As a child, art was my sanctuary. Absorbing myself in my artwork, drawing and painting, protected me from the chaos of my house.