3 Questions for Mike

What was your process for creating this work?

I buy old books at thrift stores and the like and spend time with them until images start to come together. Then I try them 3-5 different ways and settle on the versions I like best. This collage pretty much worked like that.  

What is the significance of the medium you chose for this work?

Collage is very focusing and calming for me, and I like the way that it puts one into contact with other makers and mediums. I enjoy that it is a process of discovery and exploration.

What is the significance of this work to you?

This collage makes signals collide and compete and conjure. All collage does, I guess. I couldn’t begin to narrow it all down to one aspect of significance. The noisy surface and the need for subjective context is what it’s all about for me. 

Michael Sikkema makes art in West Michigan, was born and raised in Northern Michigan, and has lived, worked, studied, and taught in the San Francisco Bay area, Buffalo, NY, and Groningen, Netherlands. He's currently working on a series of photographs, a horror poem audio piece, and a book length horror poem.