How often is a stack of playboy magazines considered a business expense?
For Janna Yotte, a Montreal-based art director and visual artist, anything printed is fair game, and once she extracts the images from their magazines with her x-acto knife, they become a potential ingredient for her collages.
She sources her images using everything from fashion editorials, science textbooks, magazine ads for luxury items, National Geographics, and anything else she finds interesting. Some cutouts are neatly organized together in her office under curious labels (such as "mains à découper"), but most just find their place wherever there is room—her ever growing collection can hardly be contained in her drawers, spilling over her floor and couch.
During my visit, she was starting a new collage. Her process is quite experimental and fascinating to watch. She'll start with a cutout of, say, a mushroom, and then will dig through her collection of limbs or snakes, tentatively place them next to the mushroom, tweak the position using tweezers by placing them under, then over, and just continuously playing around until she's satisfied.
I dug through stacks of her completed collages. On one you'll find a haunting juxtapositios of decay and luxury, and on the next you'll find sensually intertwined limbs. Check her out on Instagram (@jannayotte) to have her collages pop up in your feed! I found one that spoke to my past as a biology student and I can't wait to put it up on my wall.You can also find a few of her pieces at the Centerfold Gallery.
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