About Pamela
Pamela Kieffer is a collage artist based in Portland, Oregon. She began her exploration of visual art in Mendocino County, California, where she became established in the coastal art community. An activist in the American Labor Movement for most of her life, Pamela’s body of work is deeply influenced by both global politics and her personal experiences.
Artist Statement
Unzypt Collage is a collection of raw emotional impulses to dystopia. My work is a visual realization of the conflict between the surface and what lies underneath – dual forces that are constantly at play within our own selves and society at large. It is about being unafraid to unzip our inner lives, our authentic feelings, our deepest anxieties. Collage is my medicine and my retreat. I have an anxious mind and am always waiting for the other shoe to drop, a glass half empty thinker by nature and nurture. Through the generative process of creating collages, my worst fears are exorcised and relieved.
Most of my art has a visual density and complexity – a horror vacui of images which is the product of an anxious mind’s fear of space. For me, allowing some breathing room in a piece requires restraint. Although I sometimes work in a larger format, most of my collages are intimate scaled pieces. My visual influences include surrealism, pop art, and comic art. I am also drawn to the raw, potent energy, spontaneity, and bravery of outsider art.
My collages are a growl against the candy coated version of the world which we have created and in which we live. My work, like all art, is inescapably political. Deeper than that, it is an exploration against repression. My life has been dedicated to pursuing social change, and my art is an extension of that. My aim is not only to bear witness to the self and the world around us, but to ignite change through the release of unvarnished truth.
Unwary of embracing absurdity, my collages can be bizarre with dark humor. I am driven by visual art’s ability to pull you in, or make you want to look away before it pulls you in. Color energizes me. I find that bright colors can draw viewers in, even into uncomfortable places from which they might otherwise refuse to enter.
Unzipping is the act of exposing, of opening up to reveal what’s underneath. I believe that we have to take a hard, honest look at things in order to change them for the better. Unzypt Collage is an invitation to take that hard look- to face the things in society, and within ourselves, that we would rather not see.
Method & Process
I use the traditional Papier Collé technique of cut and paste. My process is analog from start to finish- I don’t enhance my collages digitally. I like manipulating compositions with my hands and being able to feel the individual cuts and textures with my fingers. To me, they are marks of the artist’s process, like the brush strokes of a painting.
I am a visual storyteller, but I don’t control the narrative in advance. I never know how a collage is going to end or what story it is going to tell. This freeform method allows me to channel my creative subconscious through the interactions between each placed image, like pieces in a puzzle. I am fascinated by the endless contexts images can take on when arranged in various compositions. Without a perceived plan, the work evolves collage by collage and the story reveals.
Exhibitions & Awards
Juror's Award
Gualala Art Center | 2020
Cytokine Storm won a Juror’s Award at the Gualala Art Center’s 59th Annual Art in the Redwoods Fine Arts Exhibition in 2020.
Collage & Mixed Media
Gualala Art Center | 2021
King Midas in Reverse won 3rd place in Collage & Mixed Media at the Gualala Art Center’s 60th Annual Art in the Redwoods Fine Arts Exhibition in 2021.