Libby

Saylor

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In the work of Libby Saylor, collage becomes an act of quiet reconciliation, between images, between time periods, and perhaps most profoundly, between emotions. Her compositions, built from a personal archive of 35mm photographs spanning over two decades, exude a sense of intimate fragmentation. Faintly faded hues, soft textures, and quiet domestic scenes, plants by a window, an obscured figure, a fleeting gesture, coalesce in tender juxtapositions that feel both accidental and inevitable.

There is a searching quality to her pairings, as if each fragment is reaching toward its counterpart, yearning for a sense of completion. Yet, these works do not resolve so much as they hold space for unresolved feelings, an anxiety soothed, a moment momentarily grasped. In Saylor’s hands, collage is not about breaking apart, but about bringing together, giving disparate images a chance to find companionship, to sit with one another in stillness, in mutual recognition.

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My collage work investigates notions of pairing, intimacy, and interrelatedness. Through my practice, I explore the achingly transient nature of love and connection, and play with image coupling and connectivity among seemingly disparate photographic elements. I typically utilize only fragments and cut-off slivers of imagery to represent the desperate frustration of unfulfilled closeness. My finished pieces are often quite small and delicate, reflecting the fragile nature of love, loss, heartbreak, and togetherness.

I have so many thoughts and feelings I struggle to make sense of daily, and even though making collages doesn’t exactly give me any answers, it relaxes my insides and helps me feel as though I’ve sorted something out. Pairing one image with its mate scratches that itch of anxiety within me. Perhaps I need to know I’m not alone, and helping one image to find another image to get along with gives me hope in my own quest for closeness. The tactility of this medium also keeps my mind and body grounded. I’m then left with a beautiful paper remnant to enjoy and share with others and can move on with my day in greater peace.

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I always strive to communicate themes of harmony and fusion by pairing seemingly unlike images together. I have this need to prove that even though two things, at first, don’t look like they go together, with a bit of patience and perspective, and finding the commonality within, they can be better together than apart. Once I’m finished with a collage, I want it to look like one whole block of imagery, rather than chopped up pieces, so the division lines between each image fragment are almost undetectable. That’s ideal, but I don’t always achieve that.

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I must use only my own photographic imagery, so I always begin with shooting a roll or two of film. I often shoot photographs of a place or space that I feel connected to. Once I have paper copies of my imagery, I start with one image (or, more often, one fragment of an image) that stands out and speaks to me. Then I hunt for its mate, scouring my collection of other paper images, studying closely the edges of each cut. I look for matching colors, shapes, and lines, and search until I find a moment where two edges sing together. Then I crop and cut until the two pieces look as though they are one. I always like to keep the edges organic and sort of wobbly, even though I typically make clean, rectangular collages. Adhering the pair of photo mates to the page is the final step after I’ve rehearsed everything behind the scenes first.

I have a collection of photographs I shot with my 35mm camera that date back to 2002, and I’m still using some of those images in my collages today. I typically make a digital color copy of the original photograph and use that to collage with. I always use watercolor paper as my surface for its durability, and because I often go into a collage with graphite or colored pencil as well. This helps to clean up the edges or create bridges between spaces that I don’t want.

I’m a bit of a purist, so I’d like to say that the art of collaging won’t change much, and collage artists will always use cut bits of paper in their constructions, rather than succumbing to the digital realm. However, I do think collage is becoming more mainstream, and I worry the market will become flooded, which can sometimes decrease the aesthetic quality and integrity of a thing. I truly hope we all continue to use our hands to make art.

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Libby Saylor’s work serves as a vehicle for transformation, transmuting darkness into light. Through her creative practice, she alchemizes feelings of discomfort, anxiety, and pain into compositions that evoke beauty, hope, and purity. Artmaking has long been a powerful tool for her personal healing, allowing her to navigate complex emotions through a visual language of intimacy and reflection.

Currently, Saylor assembles small and delicate mixed-media works on paper, incorporating her original analog photography to explore themes of connection and longing, safety and security, and the layered textures of memory and nostalgia. She earned her BFA in Photography from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2002. She lives and works in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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