This podcast should really be called “A Lifetime of Collage Lessons From Lance Letcher”.
This is the first episode of my podcast that I will be relistening to over several years. There is an entire career’s worth of valuable information in this episode.
Lance Letscher, is an internationally known Austin-based hand-cut collage artist. In 2017, Lance was the subject of a full-length documentary entitled, the secret life of Lance Letcher, which was the official selection of the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2017. If you haven’t watched it yet, I highly recommend it. If you watch the documentary and you observe Lance with a keen eye, you are going to get a “Master’s” class in analog collage making.
The Secret Life of Lance Letscher is available to buy or rent from Amazon. If you plan on watching the documentary, please use my affiliate link. If you press it, you will see Lance, AND Jeff Bezos will reach down in his coffers and drop a nickel out of his weenier-shaped rocket on the Red Wizard.
So what have I Learned (so far) from Lance Letscher during this collage conversation?
A recent work by Lance Letscher entitled “Small Sermon”
1.Take your time, people’s eyes recognize effort and complexity: Lance mentions how people who visit his shows often will stop and stare at his work for several minutes. His work is so intricate and includes so many layers, that people need to ponder it and really think about what they are looking at. Lance is not in the internet-content rat race many young artists are in. Am I produing content? Or am I producing art that makes people really stop and think? Can I do both?
Learning how to get your work into galleries is important: Lance mentions that there is a certain level of greatness that an artist can only achieve if their work is sold in galleries. I can’t argue with that. He acknowledges that artists are perfectly capable of selling their work on web markets like Etsy. He even mentions that galleries take half of the sale. He still thinks it’s worth it. Galleries bring their own buyers. He said it took him a few years to figure out how to get into galleries. Maybe I should get started.
Level up your cutting skills: Lance mentions that collage is easy (which it is, and the egalitarian part of me loves that) and in order to start turning heads, you have to get more intricate with your cuts. Lance uses a magnifying lamp to make his smaller cuts. I am looking forward to using the magnifying lamp (that I garbage picked) on my next project.
Celebrate the paper: What makes collage cool? All the qualities of old paper. Celebrate and even look for the imperfections when searching for collage materials. There is so much content and character already on old paper.
Multitasking is good: In Lance’s documentary, his wife mentions that he often cuts for six weeks before we starts making a composition. After I heard this, I was surprised to hear that Lance likes to multitask. He mentions that in order to overcome boredom maintain intensity, he likes to switch between projects.
Use the internet to find exactly what source material you want to work with: My most popular blog post is about how to find collage source materials. At the time I wrote the post wasn't purchasing anything on eBay. I also wasn’t looking for anything super niche. Lance has some cool stories about buying very specific items around the world using the internet. I recently purchased thousands of dollars worth of losing lottery tickets on eBay. It’s true, you can find almost anything on there you want to use for collage making.
Thanks for reading! -The Red Wizard