Artist Mary Montgomery-Lee spent the past year constructing a multi-media dada-style book about the early twentieth-century Dada movement. Using found materials and collaging text pieces, she submitted the completed project to the Brooklyn Art Library Sketchbook Project . Having discovered Mina Loy in her research for the project, Montgomery-Lee constructed a portrait page in her book inspired by Loy’s late assemblage “House Hunting.”
About the sketchbook project, entitled Dada, Stitch, and Story, she writes:
I have always loved the DADA period and Avant-Garde art in general, so I began by constructing a story from words cut from a book (like some dada poetry), then alternating pages with art I am making on teabags, featuring artists from the period. I am representing female and male DADA artists 2:1, respectively. I am creating these works infused with the artist’s style and then posting tidbits of their history on my Instagram page, along with the image of my art. This art is then sewn into my sketchbook.
I’m also intrigued by the juxtaposition of the cut up text and the portraits and the meaning that can be derived from them. I am posting on Instagram as @mary_art_girl and on Facebook as Mary Lee.
Mary contributed her Loy portrait as a postcard to our “En Dehors Garde Flash Mob” project. Dada, Stitch, and Story is now part of the Brooklyn Art Library’s sketchbook collection.
