The annual tradition continues with our 2020 original St. Nicholas paper collage entitled Santa's Cabin. This year's holiday artwork features features a Santa decked out in buffalo plaid carrying a baby elk fawn back to his winter cabin in a snow + toy filled landscape. Finished with wood frame and Museum Plexi.
Dolan's signature paper collage artwork celebrates America's West and Southwest. Color, composition, and detail come to life in hand-cut vintage materials, many salvaged in Dolan's cross-country travels.
Creating the original collage starts with a wood panel. Dolan pulls vintage sheet music from his vast collection and applies these to the wood, first with glue, then with a top layer of whitewash paint. In many prints, this background layer of sheet music peeks through.
Next, Dolan draws the outline for the original collage in graphite atop the sheet music.
Dolan returns to his extensive trove of collected papers – think magazines, antique textbooks, handwritten letters salvaged from abandoned farmsteads - and begins pulling the ideal colors for the piece. He cuts each piece of material by hand and carefully layers into the artwork. These collages are carefully crafted from thousands of small papers: no two are exactly alike.
Dolan's paper collages are finished in a handmade frame constructed from salvaged metal or a modern, minimal wood or metal frame.
