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tf collage A page for collage art by Torea Frey

A new paper collage, “say less” — another piece from my Tammy explorations earlier this summer. Bold typography, cut off...
09/02/2026

A new paper collage, “say less” — another piece from my Tammy explorations earlier this summer. Bold typography, cut off & constrained, a curious woman, a search but no finding. This one’s 4x6”, with materials from a 1940s Life and a book of black-and-white portraits.

A closer look. Peeking behind the door to get under the surface of the language? Perhaps, perhaps. Collaging my way through the unending search.

Closer still. Out of sight, out of mind? What’s important is to never stop looking, learning, loving 🖤

August was: studio time, cut paper between clumsy fingers, word mountains, existential crises, puzzles galore, and neigh...
09/01/2026

August was: studio time, cut paper between clumsy fingers, word mountains, existential crises, puzzles galore, and neighborhood rambles with the animals. Time sure is flying … what will September bring?!

The saturated colors of midcentury US magazines. They sure don’t make em like they used to, but at least no ciggie ads? Aqua and red, always a favorite collaging combo…

Base layers and structure for a new piece I’m working — dictionary scraps formed into a blast crater of sorts, with ripped paper and layers upon layers upon layers…

Tiny hands in my big ones: paper delight!

Propf I’ve been a collage artist since, well, forever, and the obsession with eyeballs? Nothing new 👀

Thinking through a way to invole sand through an hourglass, with words running outta mind…

PDX street art near my collage studio downtown. The streets are an ever rotating gallery.

More street art. So many ways of viewing, re-viewing, vomplicating, intervening…

The crow trail makes me smile. If you’re in Portland, check it out! Many delights. Some people even leave feathers an an@offering 🥹

I can’t help but see a face in profile here (pareidolia!).

I don’t paint, except ehrn I do as an experiment 😂 still have flashbacks of my disappointed grandmother ripping brush from hand in my earliest art days — her standards were impeccable and I never lived up, which is maybe why I’m a collage artist and not an oil painter.

One day a hummingbird drank from these orange firecracker flowers while I was pulling weeds, and it was near-holy.

Ernie’s a good boy 💖

Wildfire smoke haze on a little walk; dog is my co-pilot.

Collaged postcard 8, all hushed tones and brazen typography, with a poem written under a wildfire haze. Even these ephem...
08/31/2026

Collaged postcard 8, all hushed tones and brazen typography, with a poem written under a wildfire haze. Even these ephemeral paper scraps seem tired, care worn; at least the analog art gives them some life?!

A closer look at this paper collage, made with a midcentury US magazine. The letters? Intentionally cut/abbreviated. It’s your job to fill em in 😜

Collaged postcard, + proof of poem! It was good to force some acvountability for myself. Because writing’s hard now, I find I have to be very intentional so the skills don’t erode…

And the transcribed poem, reflecting on the ways my current reality calls to mind bygone days of adventure (why yes I did move across the world & resettle in India for a few years for love when I finished my undergrad degree, lol):

The smoke creeps in—
Wildfire season, not
A season when I was
Growing up, but
Then again, seasons do
Change—
And somehow I am in
Delhi, transported,
To 2004,
Casually making life-
Altering decisions in
The crematory haze
Haunting our colony,
Nothing but life ahead,
Ignoring the future
Signaled in the
Death-scented
breeze.

This paper collage uses magazine ephemera (primarily from midcentury 1940s Life and Saturday Evening Post) in black-and-...
08/31/2026

This paper collage uses magazine ephemera (primarily from midcentury 1940s Life and Saturday Evening Post) in black-and-white. Snippets of typography, a woman peeking (but at what?!), a slip of skirting flying away … a topsy turvy look at late summer life.

Here’s a closer look at the analog collage, with just a bit of the bottom edge cut off. Everything’s a little off kilter, just how I like it 🖤

CLOSER STILL! And yet no clearer what she gazes at. An eternally puzzling collage 😂

08/28/2026

letting dolly’s immortal words gas me up today. this week: slowly crawling out of funk, absorbing myself in studio work, thinking thru new ideas & much more collage + mixed media art to come, cuddling the animals, and getting up to no good with some of my nearest/dearest art buddies. 🩵

Channeling back to school in this small mixed media collage, “mistakes were made.” Paper ephemera from midcentury magazi...
08/27/2026

Channeling back to school in this small mixed media collage, “mistakes were made.” Paper ephemera from midcentury magazines, letters I scrawled in ink and graphite, and white acrylic paint. The kid’s about start middle school & I wish I could bottle up the time, stop it from passing so quick…

Closer view of the collage; probably should’ve gone in with a less transparent paint in finishing it. Still can!

The tip of the pencil. Is there anything better than being freshly sharpened & ready at the bell’s toll? (Yes I was an overachieving nerd 😂)

08/26/2026

Another day, another opportunity be more myself (read: even more stranger, more peculiar!). Find out who you are and be that, in the immortal words of Queen Dolly. Also: let’s bring some of her energy, her endless kindness & humility, to our communities, art or otherwise.

Summer’s creeping toward its end, but I’m still soaking in the sunshine days, pie & smiles & quality outdoor time. This ...
08/26/2026

Summer’s creeping toward its end, but I’m still soaking in the sunshine days, pie & smiles & quality outdoor time. This collaged postcard, part of the mail art + writing I’m working on for the Cascadia Poetics Lab’s Poetry Postcard Festival, reminded me of someone, and it sparked the instant poem I wrote on the back.

Front & back of the postcard featuring a paper collage of midcentury magic ephemera. Pie, bowling, a bit o’ optimism, the traditions of family … what’s not to love?

And the poem, transcribed:

His cobbler was
better than the lasagna
he made, ketchup
substituted for sauce. He was
so proud—
we choked it
down, asked for
more—
gluttons for
punishment, gluttons
for love.

ps seriously dementia can cram it

Those ghost fingerprints on the left margin, amiright?! Made this paper collage while thinking about the collision of wo...
08/24/2026

Those ghost fingerprints on the left margin, amiright?! Made this paper collage while thinking about the collision of work & pleasure, the things we reach for or pull away from. This one’s a small analog collage on index card sized substrate, 4x6”, part of my 2026 Tammy exploration of word works in (primarily) black and white.

And a closer look. I’ll confess, not sure if those are my fingers (I’m messy gluer) or someone else’s 😜

A postcard poetry piece, saturated colors of midcentury paper in the analog collage on front, a bit pf a sad’un scrawled...
08/20/2026

A postcard poetry piece, saturated colors of midcentury paper in the analog collage on front, a bit pf a sad’un scrawled to my unknown correspondent…something about this baby, wise beyond her years as she gazes beyond a rented bingo ball, eerily aware of what’s to come and still taken aback when it arrives…

Paper collage + poem — this set really speaks to some family stuff gping on 💔

Endless repetition of a songI never wanted to sing. Transcribed:

This Record Repeats
The exquisitr sadness
of being
haunted
by yet another
living
ghost,
veiled in lost thoughts—
not again,
not again

ps dementia sucks spread the word

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