Written by Salvatore Schiciano

Around half a decade ago, I was fortunate to come upon the work of the artists and writers of the San Francisco Renaissance, in particular, the collages of Jess and the poems of Robert Duncan. I found Jess’s collages especially exciting as they appeared to be in a state of constant expansion packed with an abundance of allusions. Similarly, I witnessed a kind of parallel expansiveness in the extent to which Jess’s work generated widespread interest, and that would, in turn, lead me to the lesser-known collagist Helen Adam, whose works present an engaging amalgamated cosmos that deliberately teeters on the edge between the horrifying and the hilarious.