Naturalistic Collages Celebrate the Little Things in Our World

I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by the amount of lit­tle things that there are in the world. Going to over­stuffed antique malls and exam­in­ing all the small objects crammed onto the shelves is enthralling: peo­ple have amassed col­lec­tions of but­tons, fig­urines, flags, post­cards, and much, much more, and I love to see how these objects are grouped togeth­er. I feel the same way when I look at col­lages by Adri­enne Slane, an Ohio-based artist whose intri­cate pieces are care­ful gath­er­ing of images. Her diverse imagery includes shells, wildlife, fruit, and fun­gi, with sources rang­ing from the 1500s to mid-1900s. The dis­parate ele­ments come togeth­er in a pleas­ing compositions.

“My work cel­e­brates the beau­ty and inter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty of the uni­verse in a time when our envi­ron­ment is in cri­sis,” she writes in her artist state­ment. “It draws its imagery from a wealth of illus­tra­tions that encour­aged explo­ration, won­der, and appre­ci­a­tion of nature in decades past.”