Jack Collins | Contemplating My Navel | LMH Healing Arts Collaborative

Visit the LMH Main Campus at 330 Arkansas Street and the LMH West Campus at 6265 Rock Chalk Drive to admire works by local artist Jack Collins!

Jack Collins uses collage as a way to create his work by painting and cutting and attaching other painted pieces of wood to the picture plane. He reorganizes and repaints the pieces until he finds an arrangement that expresses his aesthetics. The surface of the work revealed the 1/4” depth. He began to break the rectilinear edges of the flat surface and learned to incorporate the shadows of the cut pieces and use them to create the illusion of lines on the surface.

In the last 4 years, his 2-dimensional work became 3-dimensional. His visual vocabulary increased. Tension in the work increased. Revealing and exploring the interiors of my work added glimpses of the history of the work. The viewing experience for the audience was enhanced by seeing differing views from various angles.

The work Jack makes has always been informed by process and spontaneity and is paramount, despite being carefully orchestrated. The ideas he uses now explore opposites; the future and the past, the positive and the negative, the complex and the simple, the calculated and the spontaneous. Today each piece he creates is simultaneously an extension from the past, where he’s come from and what he’s learned, as well as a preview of the future, where he’s going.

 Artist Biography

After 40 years as an abstract expressionist painter, Jack Collins spent the last 8 years working on painted wood rather than working on canvas. Using thin pieces of cut and broken wood glued and screwed to a wooden panel, he rearranges them until an idea or image or movement makes visual sense to him. He finds beauty in cracks and cuts and shatters, as well as, the holes and screws and nails that appear during his artistic process. It’s been a personally fulfilling experience because he has long enjoyed surprising happenings in his work and leaving traces of previous decisions. The process and history of his work are exposed for the viewer to consider and for him to remember.

You can see more of his work at www.jackjcollins.com

 LMH Health Main Campus Gallery

330 Arkansas Street

The Main Floor near the Gold Door Elevators.

Open for public viewing:

Monday – Friday: 8 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Saturday: 8 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Sunday: Noon to 4:00 p.m.

LMH Health West Campus Gallery

6265 Rock Chalk Drive

The gallery is located on the Second Floor near Forward Coffee Shop.

Open for public viewing:

Monday – Friday: 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m

This collaboration between the Lawrence Arts Center and LMH Health is made possible through a grant provided by the Kansas Creative Arts Industry Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.