Bricolage & Paste-Paint Cut-Paper Collage

Polly M. Law is one of three artists in the current major exhibit COLLECTED LIGHT: An Exploration, which runs through June, 2025. Law was also recently featured in a solo exhibition at the gallery from January 12 - June 30, 2024.

On the three artist exhibit, Law writes, "The Scotland trip came at a period of my artistic life when I was at a pivot point - turning away from my bricolage dolls and moving into silkscreen printmaking and papier-colle work. I've never been a big sketcher, tending to 'sketch' my ideas in my mind rather than on paper. So, of course, I was woefully unprepared for the trip to Scotland, deluding myself that I would be happy just contemplating the scenery, taking a few pictures, relaxing. I had a few bits of kit with me but did end up having to order some supplies in for the duration."

"I worked the rust of many years out and started to sketch, using gouache and a motley collection of posca markers and colored pencils I scrounged from the local shop. I became enthralled by the geology on display on the beach at Saddell Bay and the tidal pools. The side-trip to the Giant's Causeway, just a nautical skip away from Campbelltown - the nearest town to Saddell - was difficult to capture. Besides the fact that it was horrifically windy, it was just too large and complex a scene to take in. Close inspection of pebbles would not do. My print-in-process took a good long while to resolve itself in my brain before I could attempt to get it on paper. At Monreith, I could again indulge in a close-focus of individual vignettes. My sketchbooks have yet to yield all their inspiration from these 2 weeks - fodder for many images to come."

On her past bricolage work, Polly relates that, "My work is paper dolls with deep personal issues. I use humble materials - illustration board, acrylic paint, buttons, wire - to achieve elegant and sophisticated effects. I manipulate the forms and employ pattern, rich color and gesture to explore myths of deep time and current self. The act of sewing the pieces together and adding sewn embellishments puts the work into the realm of the other."

(Narrative continues after the images...)

Please click on an image below to display a larger version above. Artwork shown below is currently available at the gallery. Prices range from $250 to $5,000. Most recent work is shown first.

Paintings shown below have been sold. Click on thumbnail to display above.

Paintings shown below may still be available for purchase through the gallery. Click on thumbnail to display above.

"(S)titches act by forming visible and often ceremonious attachments between materials in order to aggrandize, embellish, assert and layer authority, or swathe an object in textiles as if it were a relic."

"(T)he person wielding the needle and thread has the authority to do so, and effects a change in the world by transforming an object: making it larger, making it contain new elements, causing its increase in dimensionality (usually changing it from a two-dimensional object into a three-dimensional one), forcing a new ritualistic use upon it, and reframing it. Stitching often calls attention to itself as a means of attachment, as if the ritualized form of attachment were being showcased in the resulting object." Sewing as Authority in the Middle Ages by Kathryn M. Rudy, Zeitschrift fur Medien-und Kulturforschung, Vol.6:1 (2015)

"The female figure is my usual vehicle for expression. The female hand wields the needle, knife, and paintbrush; and that hand and mind shape the landscape my figures inhabit. The figures themselves are inwardly-focused though their gaze may be disconcertingly direct. Often they chafe at the constraints of mode but who does not also wish for the rustle of silk in their life? The figures stand proud of the backgrounds to achieve a flat/3D effect- turning the frame into a doorway, each piece a portal through which to glimpse private dramas. My work has been favorably compared to that of Joseph Cornell but in fact has been more influenced by the animation work of Jan Svankmajer, the luscious patterns, textures and graphic forms of Eyvind Earle, the eerie dioramas of the Cray Brothers and the anonymous work of my sister Seamstresses of times long past or never existed."

"I have been working in my bricolage style since 2000. My artwork is represented by galleries in Provincetown, MA; Rhinebeck, NY; and Hudson, NY; and in numerous private collections."

About Some of the Series:

"The Esopus Mystics works arose from a conviction I held in my childhood that the woods behind our house held an uncanny secret. If I achieved the right speed and turned at the right angle on the path at one particular point, I would break through to another world. I crashed my bike more than a few times and suffered bruises and scrapes but never managed to get to that other place. Now I live many hundreds of miles away but that uncanny place still exists, the gateways have merely shifted."

"The pieces in the series incorporate materials gathered from the natural world, tokens and traces of what lies beyond - and slightly to the left of - the oak, if only one could get there. The materials dictate the story of each piece. In the case of the Twins, I found one Cardinal feather and then, a while later, a feather from a Blue Jay. They were similar sizes and seemed to belong to siblings, different yet entwined."

"'Mombaccus Dreamer' uses Guinea Fowl feathers a friend gathered from her flock, she lives in the hamlet of Mombaccus, NY, and I just liked that word. 'Spring Ritual' employs small bones; it is a paean to spring."