Dollar Brand

I don't really do much in the way of digital collage. I enjoy the challenge of cut and paste - trying to achieve a layered composition by the relationship of pasted images. This is however, something I did some time ago as one of a series on SA musicians. If you look closely, you can see that I relented in the end and pasted on some extra pieces so it still ended up as an old school collage. This weekend it was posted as a piece of mail art to Roland Halbritter in Germany.

Just out of interest, Abdullah Ebrahim is one of the foremost jazz pianists to come out of South Africa. Early on in his career, he was known as Dollar Brand. If you look closely at the collage, you can see an image of a metal shop sign advertising a brand of cigarettes called Gold Dollar. This sign, salavaged from a rural Transkei trading store, now hangs in my studio. It is very beautiful and evokes memories of 1950s Africa, when Ebrahim started his career. If you get the chance, listen to "Mannenberg" or "Blues for a Hip King" - sublime.