Art(s) on the Air with Axelle Kieffer

Join Tamara for an interview with Axelle Kieffer, painter and handcut collage artist. She was raised in a tiny French town on the German border, then moved to Strasbourg for college, and eventually came to Savannah at age 35 and has been here ever since. 

She currently has a show up at Sulfur Studios - Paper Cuts, An International Collage Exchange - which runs through this Saturday, Oct 21. She's collaborated on over 200 collages since 2019, mostly through the postal service with other artists from around the world, and this exhibition is displaying many of those pieces.

Also this year, she's been published in MA LANGUE SUR TON CŒUR (MY TONGUE ON YOUR HEART), a collective book published by Joie Panique that brings together texts and images about love, by 70 artists from all over the world. 

Check out Axelle's work and follow her here:

https://www.instagram.com/axellekieffer/
https://axellekiefferart.com/ 

Topics in their chat include:

How Axelle defines the difference between surrealism and Dada; how for her first years in Savannah she created oil paintings of skulls, skeletons, etc, and she realized that her childhood was spent amongst medieval churches that had chandeliers and other decorations made from bones, which had made its way into her subconscious so thoroughly that she didn't even think of it as macabre; how she started thrift store shopping and found lots of old medical books, and the colors and shapes inspired her to begin taking them apart to create paper collages; her thoughts on using a scalpel to cut paper for a collage vs. tearing it to create an interesting, textured edge; and her involvement in "Collective Concern" - an upcoming show that will be traveling around the U.S. for the next 4 years. 

Tune in and get all the details!