Billy Copley

The “BAG SERIES”

My ongoing “Bag Series” of collages, is intended to lend multiple meanings to a quotidian object. They are the flimsy, annoying yet indispensable, plastic shopping bags, seen everywhere: flying in the wind, lying in the street, stuck in a tree or being carried home by a passing shopper. A free floating form, ever morphing from container, to animal, to electric guitar, to cartoon head. In the beginning, the “Bags” were carefully painted on plastic sheeting, peeled off and transferred to a paper background. More recently they are made by layering multiple levels of “prepared” rice and mulberry papers.

These “prepared papers” have been painted and hand printed with images or bright patterns of plaids, grids, checker boards and stripes that when cut and glued make up both the background as well as the image itself. Bags not only carry our stuff but are the perfect vehicle to advertise ideas, places or organizations. Building on this, I’ve introduce images from many sources, including cartoons, graphic art, Mexican souvenirs, American folk art and stencils from the paint store.

The “LEDGER DRAWINGS”

In my series “Ledger Drawings”, I’m experimenting in a more casual and immediate way with drawing and collage using pages torn from a large ledger book from the late 1940’s. These 80 year old Ledger sheets carry their own history, recorded in beautiful handwriting with names, dates and numbers that document what must have been important information to someone at the time. The metaphor of the “LEDGER”, might be interpreted as a record of life’s successes and failures. Working again with “prepared papers”, allows me to build an imaginary narrative in words and images which I hope has the effect of creating some kind of imagined historical document.

Other works by Billy Copley (Images available):

6 hand edition “rubber stamp” prints on Kitakata paper.
Bag Sculptures, 3 dimensional works made of paper and collage (pinatas, lunch bags, etc.).
Large collage works on paper (60 x 60”).
Paintings and works on canvas and stretched paper. various dimensions.

Billy Copley lives in New York City and works in the Hudson Valley, New York.