North Carolina collage artist sees his craft as self-care

Over the past few years, I’ve grown a deep appreciation for collage art. I’ve always enjoyed art whether it be through writing, film or photography. But I found the idea of taking parts of photos and words and other objects to create one larger piece fascinating. It is a type of art I have explored on a personal level. Not as a “serious” thing, but as a way to distract myself from the world around me. Some might call that self-care. I would.

Marcus Dawson, a collage artist from North Carolina, and I are alike in that way. He was drawn to collage art during the pandemic, putting together affirmational words and images to help him through a really difficult time. Once he started sharing his art, to his surprise, people were really drawn to it. And so for the past year, he has leaned into taking himself more seriously as an artist. He has also become more intentional about what he wants his art to do which, in his words is: “When people see it, I want them to feel it.”

Black Joy spoke in depth with Dawson about his collage art, his influences and his long-term goals as an artist.

Has growing up in North Carolina influenced your art?

Yes, North Carolina definitely shows up [in my art]. My family is from a place called Ash, North Carolina. So, there is a lot of land [and] corn. There are corn fields, especially during this time. And my mom and her brothers and sisters, they harvested tobacco during the summer. So, that’s sort of like in my blood, you know, farming, even though I didn’t necessarily do it. But it’s in my family and so it shows up in the work.

So, I read in an interview where you talked about the role of jazz in your work. Can you tell me more about that?

Yes, I’ve always been interested in jazz, jazz artists and jazz music. I would watch documentaries about different jazz artists. So, when I first started making these collage pieces of jazz musicians, [it was inspired] by these documentaries and movies. Majority of these [films] focused…