Diana Greene Winston-Salem Monthly October 2007 Artist in Residence: Paul Bright

At first glance, Paul Bright’s work desk looks like any office space run amok with paper. Look a little closer, however, and it becomes clear that his piles of paper contain intriguing bits and pieces - international letters, ticket stubs, newspaper clippings, cheese wrapping and fabric swatches. Being a collagist, these elements are Bright’s palette, the way he creates elegant structure out of chaos.

“I start with a big pile of stuff,” he explains, smiling. “Then something catches your eye; there’s electricity, a hint of relationship and then there are five or six elements playing off each other. Very often the original element disappears. It just gets you started.”

Bright’s process is improvisational. He credits jazz as an inspiration and the way the color, lines, textures and text connect and separate on the page evokes rhythm that appears at once free and harmonic. It seems fitting that at his exhibition in Pisa, Italy this summer, the collages were displayed on music stands. After Pisa, the show moved to venues in Ferrara and Cento, both in Italy.

European exhibitions are a recent development in Bright’s 20 year career. Given his Cubist style and his emphasis on form this seems a natural progression.  After all, the work of Braque and Picasso are key influences.

“The Cubists destroyed the tradition of perspective,” Bright says. “They fragmented a sense of narrative and opened new possibilities of structure and materials.” And, he laughs, “They were the first to take wallpaper and use it.”

These principles and materials are boldly evidenced in Bright’s piece, Connect please.  A bright red block of color containing that phrase, in German, is cut off. The “a” in “aschalten” (connect) is missing, suggesting just how hard connection can be despite the promises made in this age of technology. The German text collides with a bit of Russian Cyrillic newsprint, underscoring the tension of language, history, and culture. Crouching in the bottom corner, a 37-cent American postage stamp appears inconsequential, even frail.

“We are less connected than we’ve ever been,” Bright says. “We are supposed to connect, but with what?  Why?”

Bright, who works as assistant director at the Charlotte and Phil Hanes Art Gallery at Wake Forest University, makes collage as a way of addressing and, perhaps, redressing his concerns about fragmentation. The work is constructed of disparate fragments that, through attention and composition, are combined into something whole. Some pieces are precisely cut, others are frayed, but never do they appear to blend and bleed into each other. Edges and angles are a crisp prominent feature of Bright’s work.

“We are increasingly compelled to live at the speed of our inventions, velocities that would make even a Futurist dizzy,” he writes in the catalog to his Italian show.  “The time of the slow look, the long gaze, the contemplative examination, seems to be almost over, replaced by the accepted neurosis of ‘multitasking.’”

How people look at the world is important to Bright. It’s a driving force behind his work, the reason his collages are small. Measuring approximately four by three inches, the viewer must come in close and therefore take time to see the collage. Until you step in to see his vertical collage, 50% Gray, for example, it’s impossible to notice the shading of the torn paper or the way the checkerboard patterns play off each other in what Bright calls the “small wave of motion.”

“The smaller pieces tend to pull you in,” he says, explaining that he is not looking for intimacy, per se, but for time. Bright likens his collages to elegies, compositions that speak to the lost art of paying closer attention and slowing down enough to look more closely.

When did you realize you were going to live a creative life?

Since I was a child.

Where do you find your inspiration?

In aware living.  Seeing things for what they are and being interested.

What do you do to overcome a creative block?

I don’t have that.  I have the opposite problem of having a lot of built up energy and too little time to do the work.

What do you think of failure?

In a sense each piece is a failure, which keeps me going onto the next.  In that way, it’s essential.

What do you most admire in other artists?

The most critical thing is integrity.  Most good art and artists have a logical consistency. It’s logical, but not necessarily rational.  It’s like an ethic, an underpinning you can see in the work.