The nature of Austin collage artist Lance Letscher's work requires a magpie-like collecting of images, from scavenged old books to vintage catalogs and everything in between. Recently, Letscher's work has taken a horticultural and ornithological bent, featuring and array of birds and colorful vegetation.
The title "Figure 8" references Elliott Smith's final studio album of the same name. Smith himself said of the album, "I liked the idea of a self-contained, endless pursuit of perfection. But I have a problem with perfection. I don't think perfection is very artful. But there's something I liked about the image of a skater going in this endless twisted circle that doesn't have any real endpoint. So the object is not to stop or arrive anywhere; it's just to make this thing as beautiful as they can."
Letscher's collages are dizzying and endless, pursuing not perfection, as Smith says, but the journey toward beauty.
