Transformations:
The Collage Art of Guy Veryzer
". . . there were darkness and shadows, and sometimes you couldn't hear and sometimes you couldn't see it, but that's the way it is in life . . . . You can't always see and hear, but you know that something almost beyond understanding is going on. It was as if they had removed the walls from inside the houses and the rooms and you could see inside them."
- - Ingrid Bergman on the film Open City
 Guy Veryzer © 1998 Click to view full size  Guy Veryzer © 1998 Click to view full size
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Guy Summertree
Veryzer was born and raised in Michigan where, along with his close
friend Wendy Froud (now a doll and puppet
artist), he loved old fairy tales, folklore, classic children's book
illustrations, decorative arts, theater, film, and all manner of arts
and crafts. He took classes at the Cranbrook Art Academy and Birmingham
Bloomfield Art Association; then he studied ceramics and painting
at the Center for Creative Studies College of Art and Design in Detroit
(where he won the CSS Venice Study Award and four CSS Merit Awards).
After receiving his BFA, Guy lived in New York City and London, England,
creating an interdisciplinary career as a photographer, painter, collage
maker, designer, photo researcher, model, poet, and playwright. His paintings, collages, and ceramics have been exhibited at CFM Gallery in New York, Christie's Education Center in London, and other venues, and his art can be found in private collections in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Indonesia. He has been an illustrator for The Village Voice, After Dark and Christopher Street Magazine, and has designed CD covers, book covers, and interior book illustrations. Currently, Guy lives in Manhattan where he works in close collaboration with dance and theater companies, in addition to doing portrait photography and fine art commissions. In the last decade, he has created collage set projections for a number of stage productions including: "Sirens: Solo & Cloister" and "EDGE" (dances by Carol Blanco, 1993); "Possessions" (the Blanco Dancers at the Merce Cunningham Studio, 1994); "Miss Julie" (Off Broadway, 1995); "Infidels" (the Blanco Dancers at La MaMa, 1996); "Jessie and the Bandit Queen" (Off Broadway, 1998); and "Boy With Enameled Eyes" (the Blanco Dancers at La MaMa, 1977) -- as well as commercial collages for such clients as Calvin Klein Fragrances and Kolipin's History of Mental Illness project. Guy is also a writer of plays that have been performed Off Broadway in New York City, and of poetry that has been published in The Male Whore's Song, The Armless Maiden, and other collections. Choosing a small sampling of works from the stunning range of Guy's portfolio is not an easy task, but we hope that the images on this page will give you a taste of the playful, sensual, mythical vision of this multi-faceted artist. About these images, Guy says: "They are not a representation of something that did, or does, exist. Each piece is a mystic keyhole to peer into another realm, windows to worlds of my imagining, and viewers are voyeurs looking through to the unexpected world on the other side of that portal. My mixed media collage paintings include photographs I have taken and found images, along with painted images and various objects incorporated to create small, fanatical, fantastic, even fetishistic environments." These collages perfectly capture elusive, potent moments of transformation, stepping easily across the boundaries separating realism from surrealism and the waking world from the land of dream. We are pleased to present this new exhibition of Guy Veryzer's haunted (and haunting) art, steeped as it is in the rich symbolism of myth, shadow magic, and dreams . . . . For more information on the art or the artist, email Guy Veryzer Visuals. |
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