Sitting Down With Visions Collage

Tell us a bit about who you are and what you do.

My name is Steve Haney I’m a freelance musician, and multi-media analog collage artist.

How does music correlate with your art?

Music inspires a lot of my collage art especially when working with musical oriented images.

Who are your influences musically and as a mixed media artist?

I love Bridget Riley for her incredible op art work. Banksy for street art, Mati Klarwein for his paintings on album covers for Miles Davis, Santana. Etc..

How long have you been involved in art, and do you think the current global pandemic has fueled the fire for you to delve deeper into creating more of your art?

I started in April of 2019 so I’ve been doing analog collage for less than a year and a half. This pandemic has definitely allowed more time to explore collage art, and the different styles within it. I only really use what I have cut up from my collection of old magazines, books, and occasional record sleeves.

You’ve done some Lp and music covers already (Young Gun Silver Fox, Jungle Fire, etc), which are very dope and visually pleasing by the way, do you see this as something you’ll continue to do moving forward?

Appreciate it. Since starting over a year ago I’ve had the pleasure of featuring my collage art on 6 album covers along with some digital song single releases. I’ve been collecting albums for a long time, so I’ve been really influenced by album cover art. One big reason of getting into collage art was for the necessity of coming up with new art for Jungle Fire’s third album. I found an image that clicked, but it had to be added into photoshop to give it the split effect I was looking for. I don’t use photoshop so I usually do the analog collage then scan a hi-res digital file of it to share with a graphic artist to finalize the layout.

Personally, as a DJ, I want to be involved in all the aspects of my brand, the same here with Flea Market Funk. Has this always been that way with you with your music projects, etc.?

Now that I’ve been spending more time on the visual art side I’d like to think I can try to match imagery with any music that I’m involved in in the future.

What kind of music are you listening to these days, and what are you listening to while working? For example, when you’re making a Stevie Wonder collage, are you listening to him? Tell us more about that.

I like to go through my record collection, and pull random albums. Luckily I’ve had the opportunity to travel alot in the past which allowed me to find music in person from places like Cuba, Brazil,and Europe. I tend to feel that music recorded anywhere in the world between 1968 and 1975 has a strong appeal to my ears since they sound great sonically, and the cover art was always unique.

Could you tell us how your creative process works with your art? Do you see things, write them down and search out the components, or is it more of an organic process of say: I’ve got this photo I cut out and I’m going to go stream of consciousness and just cut out what comes next and see how it fits? Can you speak on that?

For the most part it’s just organic ideas of blending random images together to complete a whole new composition. I like surreal imagery that has a kind of psychedelic nature. I’ll see a particular collage layout technique, and try to replicate it with whatever images I have cut up in front of me. I try not to use online image print outs mainly because of the resolution so I use about 99% analog clippings.

Can you speak on your philosophy of making music and art?

My philosophy is pretty simple: if it makes you happy at the end of the day, then keep doing what your doing. I like the process of making music and art when it comes organically. I feel that’s the essence of you can capture it naturally.

Parting words, anything you want.

Thanks for the feature.