COLLAGES BY MAURA DEROSE — Wednesday Zine

Maura DeRose is a senior at Barnard College of Columbia University studying Art History and Film. You can follow her @mauraannederose

I started collaging a lot in middle school, probably because I was obsessed with magazines and wanted to decorate all my belongings with them. I got more "serious" about it in college. It was the perfect intersection of my two majors, art history and film studies. You can apply a lot of principles of film editing to collage. It helped my skin picking, too, because it gave me something else to do with my hands. Part of why I love collage so much is that it's really accessible. Anyone can make them, and I think they're pretty legible. You don't need prior knowledge of art history to understand them. I like to include pop culture references in mine. I want them to be funny and relatable. But maybe they're not that legible because it's mostly inside jokes between me and my mom.

My collages aren't really about anything. I don't usually have any ideas in mind, I just put on Arcade Fire really loud and cut and paste. But looking back at them I think they're really all about female adolescence. I think teenage girls aren't taken seriously enough. Sofia Coppola is a huge inspiration to me, and I hope my collages feel like her movies.

Drawing parallels between The Virgin Suicides and the 19th century photographer Lady Hawarden. Teenage girls have been bored at home forever!

This one is an ode to my favorite dorm room. Overall I was pretty sad that semester, but it was also home to some of my happiest memories.

This collage is about a college student named Mollie Tibbets who was murdered while jogging near her home in Iowa. I'm really interested in when female adolescence ends prematurely. I started collaging constantly after Tessa Majors was murdered at Barnard College, and I haven't stopped since. I'm not sure exactly what it is about losing teenage girls enamors me so much, but I know I want to make more pieces like this in the future. Hopefully it will help me figure it out.