Lance Letscher has been described as “a poet in scrap paper” whose collages are constructed out of cast-off materials such as paperback book covers, ledger sheets, letters, recipes, and Big Chief tablet pages. The artist goes to the trash bin, junk shops and second-hand stores for much of the material found in his collages. These discarded materials are transformed into dizzying pinwheels or parqueted blocks of color and text, often densely woven, inviting the viewer to be consumed by the rich tapestry, but sometimes sparely manipulated to allow the viewer a deep breath of space and line. The work speaks to an intuitive understanding of color theory, and a care for precision and craft. To quote from a review by Andrew Long, "Lance is a contemporary weaver of new ground and pattern with an underlying post-modernist sensibility…His work is smart and informed by the many turns in the road of art history. However, the uniqueness in his work, not present in many collages, is that he lets the viewer imagine, and thereby elicits a playful and meditative state." Letscher collects handwritten documents as well -- ledgers, letters, recipes, lists -- always looking at the emotional quality of the script rather than the information contained. And he loves the out-of-control aspect of children's handwriting, the expressionistic quality it has. "I look for something that has a mysterious quality," he says. "Something you can't put your finger on." |