About the artwork:
November 3, 1982 is a mixed media collage on paper made on the date of its title. For nearly forty years, John Evans made daily collages out of discarded materials he found on the streets of New York. Instead of layering in the typical collage method, Evans isolates the pasted elements on the page as discrete forms. He then uses ink to connect and build frames around the individual shapes, completing the composition with watercolor washes.
About the artist:
John Evans made collages every day for nearly forty years using discarded material found on the streets of New York. Inspired by Hannah Höch, Joseph Cornell, and Kurt Schwitters, Evans developed a highly site-specific practice that responded to materials found in his immediate environment, and he earnestly recorded life by capturing the minutiae of his changing neighborhood, art scene, and city. His collages were made with a range of detritus, including business cards, fortune cookie aphorisms, newspaper clippings, receipts, passport and family photographs, box labels, stickers, embroidered fabric, envelopes, and pencil shavings. Each collage, dutifully stamped with the day, month, and year of its making, marks a singular moment in time as well as the evolving vision of an artist living in and of the world. Evans was a key artist in the mail art movement and recorded correspondences with his contemporaries in his detailed diary.