Nerd Love – The Paper Art of Meghan Stratman

Collage.  It’s not a very hip word, really – has a whiff of the fuzzyfelt about it, don’t you think?  Not so for Nebraska based artist Meghan Stratman. Give her a cutting matte, some paper and an Exacto-knife and you never know quite what she is going to come up with.

Stratman’s wonderful collages induce a sense of flights of the imagination; they take you to somewhere care free – despite the occasionally darker aspect of her work.  They are not quite portraits yet they do not (in my opinion) constitute caricature either.  Sourced eclectically, TV and film characters rub shoulders with those from literature and games plus many which are simply 100 percent inventions of Stratman’s mind's eye.

Films, TV, video games, books – you will find inspiration drawn from these media.  Yet although you are sometimes in the land of the fairy tale there is also a darker side of Stratman’s imagination and her influences are also drawn from the likes of Audrey Kawasaki. What bleeds through Stratman’s work, however, is the love she has for her subjects.

At her website, the marvelously named Bunny Pirates (that dichotomy alone sums her up) she has started a project which she unashamedly calls Nerd Love.  Over the year she will create 52 weeks of paper fandom with a new conception appearing each week. She is on week twenty, so there is plenty to see as well as her other collections.Oh - and you can buy them!

In the meantime, here is a cross section of her work, reproduced with the kind permission of the artist, Meghan Stratman.

Don't forget to visit Meghan's site - Bunny Pirates!