Despite never being formally trained in Art, “I’ve always felt a need to create. It’s my outlet! And it totally keeps me balanced,” reflects analog collage artist Anna Rindos. Taking influence from her mother, who made Anna’s clothes growing up and installed her quilt creations everywhere around the house including on beds, walls and tables; Anna explored collage initially as a way to make cards and love notes for friends and family. As her collages got bigger and more elaborate, they naturally evolved into something beyond just cards. Rindos now designs collage-based prints and wheat paste designs. After making her collages by hand, she’ll scan the image so that it can be applied on fabric, manipulated to different scales and formatted to print. As for wheat pasting, “You just never know how the piece will age within a space. Once it’s up, it totally takes on a life of its own. You have to surrender it to the elements.” Generally speaking, she creates work as a way to digest the constant barrage of imagery coming from advertising, news and social media. “By slowly dissecting and layering mass publications, I can better reflect on societal messages that have been thrown at me.” Questions she poses in her works revolve around gender, violence, conflict, war and anxieties around women’s rights. Lately, the artist has been focusing on creating works that “celebrate women and their bodies as symbols of power, strength and beauty, rather than items to own, regulate and demonize.” A few months ago, Anna relocated to Paris via Brooklyn. All of her work is done out of her apartment (which looks like a confetti bomb most of the time). “It’s ideal for me―and my two needy cats―to have one place for rest/work.” She’s currently working on illustrations for a book of essays in collaboration with Libby Doyne, which should finalized in August. “I’m also developing some new clothing prints. Trying to create a new summer wardrobe! I’ve had a lot of fun creating my own clothing and it’s something I’m trying to expand on.” Beyond that, Rindos would like to experiment with creating sculptural, three-dimensional pieces, and to combine larger objects into her collages. She’s recently been inspired by the textile art of Maria Guzman Capron, Peggy Noland and Natalie Baxter. “The colors and textures these women use blow my mind! I just can’t stop dreaming about making pieces that feel like they’re growing out of the wall. Like toxic, colorful mold.”
Follow her on Instagram @annarindos