By Elizabeth Harris
Making collages started out as a fun weekly creative past-time with a friend has now become part of a career for artist Ginger Mayerson. Ginger is an LA-based artist. Originally a trained composer, Ginger has been making collages for her own amusement for years. “All the things you learn from composition, consistency, and having a whole from start to finish that just transfer right over into collage,” she recounts. Since 2007, she has been showing her collages in exhibitions and shows throughout LA and even had her works published in multiple books.
I first came upon Ginger’s work at a local coffee shop, Kafn. There a selection of her works hanging on the walls providing some very much needed beautiful visual stimuli. What drew me to her collages was her use of old and new, bright and dark, pensive and funny.
While living and traveling around Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s, Ginger explored the local art scenes which still influence her work today. “I love Warsaw because the art scene was all 20th and 21st-century works. While living in Prague I went to the show of a very famous collage artist, Jiří Kolář. He’s the same 60’s era as all those same crazy collage artists right before Andy Warhol and Pop art. This show had a big effect on me because I really enjoyed it and found it very inspirational,” she recalls.
Upon returning to the US, Ginger found opportunities in LA working at USC which became her treasure trove of supplies and inspiration. With USC needing to make space in storage every so often, Ginger would have access to vintage books, catalogs, magazines, and other printed works. These vintage finds along with magazines from friends and local periodicals combine to create work that shows a nod to the influence of Jiří Kolář while combining the local elements and environs in Los Angeles and the past to create something new and modern.
Over the years, her collages have become a mirror to herself. They are Ginger’s way of exploring fantasies, dreams, stylistic choices, reflections, and evolution. Now, for the artist, her next evolution will be applying her artistic style to a more traditional medium - painting. I am sure through like collages, they’ll be anything but traditional. They’ll be her new medium of assembling dreams.
You can see Ginger’s work first at Kafn Coffee in Adam Hills in Glendale, CA. Her works are up for sale at the cafe. Not to mention, they have great coffee, drinks, and devilishly good chocolate cake.
Ginger Mayerson passed away after this article was published on March 26, 2021, in Los Angeles. The artist was born in Glendale, CA in 1960, and she leaves a legacy as "a true artist, a diamond with many facets."
You can view Ginger's works at www.collage.gingermayerson.com. Ginger also kept a blog at www.gm.wapshottpress.org.
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