Coral Springs collage artist Janet Gold emerged as a street artist (with permission) during last spring’s COVID-19 quarantine.
Busy working in her Tamarac studio and applying for grants and other opportunities, her trajectory changed when she was selected for her first Collage as Street Art residency through Kolaj magazine.
The premise of the residency is to bring collage to street art in the manner of Banksy, Keith Haring, Basquiat, and Shepard Fairey.
Not an underground artist, Gold has been a board member of Fort Lauderdale’s Art in Public Places, the Coral Springs Museum of Art, and the National Association of Women Artists/Florida Chapter.
The prolific artist, who twice won the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship (1999 and 2008) and who has had her work on exhibit at both the Coral Springs and the Boca Raton museums of art, was thrilled to be accepted as one of 15 collage artists from around the world.
“I’m not your typical street artist,” says Gold, the former first lady of Coral Springs (her husband, Roy Gold, was mayor of that city from 2010 to 2012).
“I had to pick an issue to bring to the streets,” Gold says. “This is a different audience and different venue than my museum-quality collages.”
“In this project-driven collage residency, artists delve into the history, methods, and major artists of the ‘street art’ movement with an emphasis on collage,” says Christopher Kurts of Kolaj Magazine.
“Participants put these methods into practice, taking their collage art out into the streets while documenting the entire process, which will be published in a Kolaj Street Krewe book later this year.”
Not comfortable tagging her city at night, in the dark, dressed in black, Gold sought and got permission from five venues in and around Broward County to display the results of her residency, a project she calls “EVERYBODY’S EVERYTHING.”
The title refers to the theme of gender fluidity, and Gold’s large figurative collages depict mixed-and-matched body parts showcasing her take on the social movement.
Using images she cuts from vintage fashion magazines, she reimagines the stories they tell.
In August 2020, Gold installed her works under the moniker “Criminal Collage with Permission,” at the Coral Springs Museum of Art, the Art Gallery 21 in Wilton Manors, the Cook and the Cork restaurant in Coral Springs, and the Girls’ Club and FATVillage, both in Fort Lauderdale.
“Janet’s work is very interesting, especially considering that it is collaged work created to be a mural on a building’s exterior,” says FATVillage’s founder, Doug McCraw. “By employing different anatomical photos to compose multiple aspects of gender and identity, Janet’s created a contemporary commentary on her subject matter.
“She has a very experienced composition aesthetic and a wonderful way of expressing herself through her art.”
At the Cook and the Cork restaurant, Gold’s collage depicts a female model’s head with long dark hair abruptly juxtaposed with a second woman’s torso and exposed breasts, partially covered by that model’s long blonde hair. A large feminine hand holding a lit cigarette dominates the foreground, while a pair of androgenous legs in mid-stride, clad in jeans and black-and-white Converse completes the image.
The high-fashion images are at once edgy and provocative and highlight the artist’s perspective that we all exist in each other.
Constance Ruppender of Art Gallery 21, who exhibited Gold’s past works in a one-woman show at her gallery, says, “I admire Janet as an artist, and as a doer. She doesn’t just make art. She puts her creations out to the universe with an open heart and inspires others.”
For Gold, who has been in museums and galleries and the recipient of a number of grants, winning the Kolaj residency is the icing on the cake. And while she will be retiring her tag name, we’re sure we’ll see a lot more work by Janet Gold in the future.