Messages & Magic

American Art Review (Vol. XX No. 6 2008) was in my mailbox today and that's where I read about the show titled "Messages & Magic: 100 Years of Collage and Assemblage in American Art" on view through January 25, 2009 at the Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan Wisconsin. The article is illustrated by a photo of a collage by Felipe Jesus Consalvos. The collage is titled: "Search for Understanding." It has a beautiful cigar band boarder framing an old sepia-toned photograph of a woman in a white dress... a nurse one might conclude from the anatomical bust (added by the artist) sitting on a table to her left. On closer inspection she looks more like a bride with a veil, but it's hard to tell for sure. Her face is obscured by a pasted-on fox head. There is a man in his underwear about to do a hand-stand in front of her and he's wearing the ubiquitous head of George Washington cut from a dollar bill. Felipe Jesus Consalvos was born in Cuba in 1891 and died in Philadelphia. You can best see his work at the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in that same city.