Interview: Kirsten McCrea Talks Papirmass & Work + Life + Art Balance

Kirsten McCrea is the cre­ator of Papir­mass, an afford­able art sub­scrip­tion ser­vice that she runs with her hus­band, Jp King. Each month, they thought­ful­ly curate the pair­ing of con­tem­po­rary artists and authors and gen­er­al­ly make the mail more fun! There’s a print on one side and a writ­ing on the oth­er. So, after you’ve fin­ished read­ing, frame the print and hang it on your wall!

For those play­ing along at home, I’ve teamed up with Kirsten to bring you the Col­lage Scrap Exchange. Let’s get to know her bet­ter — read the long­form inter­view below!

Tell us a lit­tle bit about your back­ground and how you came up with the idea for Papir­mass. What was your ini­tial inspi­ra­tion for it?

I found­ed Papir­mass after grad­u­at­ing from art school mov­ing from Mon­tre­al back to my home­town. I was struck by the lack of access to excit­ing, con­tem­po­rary art (that is so easy to take for grant­ed in large urban cen­tres). I was also work­ing mul­ti­ple jobs and had absolute­ly no free time, so I was­n’t able to make it out to the art events that were hap­pen­ing. I want­ed great art to come right to my doorstep, and as an artist, I of course want­ed it to be fair­ly afford­able. I Googled ‘afford­able art sub­scrip­tion’, and when noth­ing came up I knew I had to cre­ate one.

In the 5 years since then Papir­mass has mailed over 45,000 art prints to peo­ple around the world! Each print fea­tures art on the front and con­tem­po­rary writ­ing on the back. It has moved with me back to Mon­tre­al, and now to my cur­rent home in Toronto.

 You start­ed Papir­mass in 2009. How many dif­fer­ent artists have you fea­tured dur­ing that time? How do you decide who/what makes it into each issue?

By the end of this year we will have pub­lished the work of over 100 artists and writ­ers! Each issue fea­tures a dif­fer­ent pair­ing of art and writ­ing, so it can be a chal­lenge to find works that res­onate with each oth­er. We work well in advance, select­ing pieces based on qual­i­ty and wait­ing until we find the right artis­tic or lit­er­ary match.

We have an open call for sub­mis­sions, but with me being an artist and Jp King (our lit­er­ary edi­tor and my hus­band) hav­ing a back­ground in Cre­ative Writ­ing, it’s also excit­ing for us to approach the long list of cre­ative peo­ple we admire to ask them to participate.

How do you keep every iter­a­tion feel­ing fresh and ensure your read­ers receive new and excit­ing work?

We keep things fresh by play­ing around with for­mat a lot. Every issue is total­ly dif­fer­ent than the one that came before! Along with stan­dard art prints, sub­scribers can expect to receive the occa­sion­al post­card issue, small book­let, and oth­er sur­pris­es (one of our recent issues was a small paper sculp­ture).

Jp and I trav­el a lot (we are in Chi­na right now!), and are always on the hunt for new ideas from far­away places. It is amaz­ing how great print cul­ture is around the world — I have nev­er vis­it­ed a place where peo­ple weren’t doing absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing things with small press print pro­duc­tion. We are pub­lished in part­ner­ship with the exper­i­men­tal riso­graph pub­lish­ing stu­dio Paper Push­er, and have their sup­port when it comes to com­ing up with ideas for print pro­duc­tion, design, and for­mat­ting. We real­ly aim to push the bound­aries of exper­i­men­tal print.

What inter­ests you the most about col­lage? And, who are some of your favorite col­lage artists that you’ve fea­tured in Papirmass?

I’ve always loved col­lage, and Jp (along with being a writer and design­er) is a col­lage artist. We’ve actu­al­ly fea­tured pair­ings of his writ­ing and col­lage work in two of our issues, here and here.

I have a back­ground in paint­ing, but I’ve also always felt like col­lage is a huge part of what I do. Remix­ing and sam­pling ref­er­ence images, over­lay­ing and com­bin­ing them into new and unex­pect­ed forms — it’s all a part of the col­lage process.

I real­ly love our recent issue, fea­tur­ing a col­lage by Hol­lie Chas­tain. We have quite a few col­lage artists com­ing up in the next year, which I think makes a lot of sense. The medi­um seems to be expe­ri­enc­ing a bit of a resur­gence in pop­u­lar­i­ty right now, with inter­na­tion­al tour­ing exhi­bi­tions like the Weird Col­lage Show and ded­i­cat­ed books and mag­a­zines appear­ing in record numbers.

You can see a sam­ple of our past prints fea­tur­ing col­lage here.

Issue no. 57 — art by Carme­lo Blandino

In addi­tion to run­ning this awe­some sub­scrip­tion ser­vice, you’re also a prac­tic­ing artist. How do you make time for both, and do the two endeav­ors ever inter­twine? What tips would you give for those jug­gling two sim­i­lar (but still dif­fer­ent) cre­ative pursuits?

Ah, the age-old ques­tion of how to bal­ance work and life! Or in this case, work-art-life. To be hon­est, it’s dif­fi­cult at times. I find it hard to switch gears between per­son­al art work, my respon­si­bil­i­ties with Papir­mass, and gen­er­al life duties. I think that my cop­ing mech­a­nism for hav­ing a lot on my plate has been to work real­ly long hours, sev­en days a week. As I get old­er, it’s start­ing to become appar­ent that this worka­holic lifestyle isn’t sus­tain­able. My main goal for 2015 is to spend more time with friends and fam­i­ly, get more exer­cise, cook more meals, and just gen­er­al­ly relax more. Ener­gy is renew­able, but you have to renew it. With­out down time it is way too easy to get burnt out.

One thing that has real­ly helped me is devel­op­ing var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tion tech­niques. The book ‘Mak­ing Ideas Hap­pen’ by Scott Bel­sky was enor­mous­ly illu­mi­nat­ing and help­ful, and I have devel­oped a per­son­al vari­a­tion of his sys­tem that real­ly seems to work. I write down every­thing that I need to do and orga­nize it into 3 areas: things that need to be done now, things that need to be done soon, and things that I would like to do even­tu­al­ly. Part of hav­ing more down time has been mov­ing more and more things into the even­tu­al­ly pile, and real­iz­ing that just because I have an idea does­n’t mean that it has to hap­pen now. Life is long!

In terms of whether Papir­mass and my own art inter­twine: absolute­ly. Run­ning Papir­mass has offered me an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with oth­er artists, which has been an incred­i­bly valu­able expe­ri­ence for me. Along with run­ning Papir­mass and mak­ing my own art, I am also in a col­lec­tive called En Masse. We paint giant col­lab­o­ra­tive black and white murals togeth­er (I’m in Chi­na paint­ing with them at the Shang­hai Arts Fes­ti­val!). I would­n’t trade this oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with artists for any­thing in the world. It’s so easy with art and design to have a soli­tary prac­tice, and so valu­able to find ways to work with oth­er cre­ative people.

The art world can be com­pet­i­tive and real­ly com­mer­cial­ly dri­ven. Being able to work with oth­er cre­ative peo­ple in a non-com­pet­i­tive, non-com­mer­cial way offers you an oppor­tu­ni­ty to real­ly express your­self artis­ti­cal­ly, freed of the con­straints that the art sys­tem places on cre­ativ­i­ty. Which is why I think the Col­lage Scrap Exchange we are host­ing is a real­ly cool idea. It’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to set aside mon­ey, ego, and all the rest of that junk that creeps its way into our art and just get excit­ed about tak­ing what some­one else has offered you and mak­ing some­thing with it. I can’t wait to see what peo­ple create!

Thanks, Kirsten! And, dear read­ers, don’t for­get to sign up for this: