Cassia Beck
Cassia Beck makes witty, minimal collages from her home studio in Brighton on the south coast of England. We went to meet her to talk to her about the role collage plays in her life and how she has managed to turn her creative passion into a business.
Originally published in Issue #19 of Contemporary Collage Magazine 2023
Hi Cassia, you've been collaging for a number of years, is art in your background?
Yes, it runs in the family. I've always been creative for as long as I can remember, I loved art at school, I did A-level art and ceramics and then went to university and did ceramics- which is completely different to what I’m doing now, but I felt like I didn't know what to do and ceramics was what I was good at.
Where did you do your ceramics degree?
At the University of Westminster near Harrow.
I went from Devon in the middle of nowhere to Harrow and messed up my degree - I managed to get a 2:1 in the end but I didn't take it seriously. And I didn't really enjoy it either, I found it difficult. I think escaping from Devon just made me
party like there was no tomorrow. I didn't take it seriously until my final year, and then it turned into something that was quite stressful.
So you left ceramics behind fairly quickly?
I carried on in my Mum’s shed for a while and then I moved down to Brighton and couldn't afford a studio couldn't afford a kiln, so I just became a cleaner for a while. Then I studied to become a counsellor. In the meantime, I was making collages, if I wrote to people I'd make collages out of old cigarette boxes with letters inside. So, I was always doing it. But I never really thought of it as collage.
Is that what you do today – counselling?
No, I didn't do anything with that either. I was just like, What do I do, I’ve got to do something and my Mum kept saying ‘ how about a counsellor. You're good at listening.’ But it never led anywhere. My collage art has been full-time for about 15 years now.
And do you sell your pieces?
Yes, I've been selling for years on Etsy, and also through my website.
I think a lot of people are interested in how they make that transition from just making collage to monetising it. When you first started in college, did you think - This is something I'm going to do immediately to try and earn some income.
I was just making them and hiding them away until my partner saw them and said to try and put them on Etsy. I was doing photography as a hobby, selling my photographs already, but hiding collages away- they're just my little thing. I decided to open an Etsy shop with my collages as well and they seem to be popular. So, I just carried on from there.
What kind of price bracket you do kind of sell them for?
I sell prints which range from £15 up to £80 for the larger sizes, but I'm focusing more on selling my originals now they’re around £90 pounds.
Over 15 years, you must have built up a good following or customer base. Presumably, you've learned all the lessons of what works and what doesn't work on Etsy?
Yes, just by seeing what's popular as well. It's quite interesting to see where that takes you.
I don't do it for the money, I've always done it because I enjoy it. I find it empties my brain when I'm cutting stuff out. When something's popular, it's it makes you go down a different avenue and try and create similar things.
And your style, which is very distinctive… Have you been working in a similar style for a while?
I think I have…it's changed, but I've always played with shapes and people. Using book pages has changed my work significantly. I used to use bits of Mountboard or fine art paper, but there's something about the old paper and the stains that changes the feel of the work.
So just the substrate changes your thought process?
I think it does, because sometimes you're playing with the marks that are already there like the folds, they become something else. Even something say – if a piece of paper doesn't quite fit on the page I’ll allow it to overhang. That becomes something new in itself, it’s just changing constantly.
If I was to try and kind of come up with a description for your collage. I suppose the phrase that I would come up with would be ‘visual wit’. Does that chime with you?
Yes. I've seen people when they look at my work, they’ll laugh or smile, because there are funny things in there. And I think I try to make them funny or witty as well. They’re funny but also with a bit of cleverness in terms of the combinations that you put together. What comes first, you generally have a small number of elements within your collage. There's generally a person in there and then you have the graphic shapes.
Are you normally looking for the person first and then thinking ‘what can I get that person to be doing?’
It's like a puzzle. It's trying to make them fit into a scenario that's not real. The piece I’ve just finished took forever – whilst the final piece looks very simple, it took me ages to find and choose the right It took me a good week of going back and back and back again.
And do you have a bank of people you've cut out to use in your work?
Yes. Literally today I've been cutting a load of old National Geographic magazines I got in the post. And I've just been finding interesting people to cut out and add to my collection.
So just talk me through your process then. So you're flicking through? And you're waiting for that little moment of like…'Oh, that's interesting'?
Yes, I see something that catches my eye. I quite like images where you don't really know what the person is looking at. It's the back of the person, so I can make up a story for them.
You just used the word story then? Are you trying to tell little vignette stories within your work?
Some of it's quite mysterious. You don't really know what the person is doing or where they are and that's quite what I like about it, is the anonymity. And the viewer is then free to make a story out of it themselves. I do a lot of fairs and people are actually drawn to my images, because they remind them of something in their past.
You have a very minimalist, quiet style, why is that important to you?
I just don't like busy. I work better if I'm not overloaded with too much imagery. There's someone who I'm really inspired by - Kareem Rizk. I love his work, it's very layered, lots going on in it. But it's also very minimal at the same time. I don't feel like I can recreate something like that. I prefer to let the book page do its thing.
What about colour then, because you do seem to work within a certain kind of colour band.
They are mostly colours I'm drawn to. Again, the vintage magazines are helping me out here because they're all colours that are just in there. I like to mix them up with modern colours say a bit of hot pink, to modernise it and give it a bit of a pop.
Have you ever done any stuff that's commissioned in terms of editorials?
No, I haven't really, I don't work well under pressure, hence my degree. I just feel like once I'm under pressure my mind just shuts down. I can't do it. If someone approached me, I'd give it a go, I designed a beer can not long ago - that's not editorial but it was really fun to do. But again, I felt the pressure was on, I've got to please this person with what they want, they've got their own vision as well. I just prefer to work spontaneously, I think.
So where's the balance for you when you're working then in terms of doing your own thing and losing yourself within the process, but also at the same time, perhaps having a commercial eye on whether the piece is going to sell? Is that a kind of a balance you're playing with a lot?
Instagram’s good for getting the feelers out there and seeing what people like. But again, I just like making them and if they sell, they sell. If they don't, they don't. So far, it's been quite good so I feel like I'm doing something right.
And when you said you sell prints, presumably you'll sell them in various sizes.
Yes, I do. In fact, last Saturday at a fair I had an original and I had a print and someone was interested in what they look like together – the original was so much nicer. Also, I'm changing the way I work now, I realised was I was spending so much time on the computer not really making. The last few months of last year, I wasn't making anything because I was so busy editing on Etsy sorting out my shop. It made me think that I need to make more and not worry so much about the printing. I almost want to just focus on selling originals and doing more exhibitions.
How would you feel when you sell an original? Do you ever have a sense of regret?
Yes I do. I sold one in a frame and it was one of my favourite ones I made. I still feel sad now. I think because there's only one and when it's gone, it’s gone. I scan them for records but It's still sad to see them go. But it's nice as well, because someone loves it. So that's something very satisfying in itself.
What do you think people generally respond to. You say their reaction when they saw it? What are they responding to?
They're responding to the hand cut element of it and the shapes and I think probably the vintage papers with all the marks I think just so much as digital these days they're finding it refreshing to see old materials being used in a new way.
Do you ever get that typical art thing when people say, 'anyone could’ve done that'?
Yes. I do. And sometimes I actually feel when I'm making them, I feel like I'm just playing. And how can someone take me seriously because I'm just cutting out shapes, putting them together and they look nice. I get that response as well. Someone responded saying when I said, I was a collage artist, and they said, “Oh, you're not going to make any money till you die then, are you?”
So where do you think you're going to go in the future?
I'd like to try going bigger but that's difficult with minimal and small magazine images. The thing I love about this, is it is spontaneous and I make something one day and then it will lead me on something completely different, who knows what I'll be doing in a few weeks, I feel like it's changing all the time.
Working in a very minimal way requires a high degree of discipline. You have to know when to stop and walk away. Do you ever struggle with that at all?
I find that I struggle with adding more. I've tried adding more and it doesn't work. I feel like I go too far then and then I get frustrated because I feel I don’t really know where I’m going.
So what is it about collage, from your perspective, that keeps you interested and coming back for more?
Like I said when I'm cutting out that's one thing it's almost like exercise, I don't think about anything else while I'm cutting out really, it's a good bit of space for me in a hectic household, it's just fun. I find it really fun to make new scenarios, to take someone out of a book page on a mountain and put them somewhere completely different, or finding the right colour combinations – it’s the puzzle element of trying to make things fit together, I find it frees me. I'm just so visual, I just love putting together all the elements.
I just briefly looked around do you put stuff in your in your own house?
I've got really old pieces, I've got a couple of bits upstairs. Now and again, I find looking back on old work I've made, I wonder how I did it. Do you ever get that? There's some clever things that I've made that were literally made because the elements happened to be right there. And then I've looked back and gone – ‘how the hell did I come up with that?’. Collage still surprises me, even after all this time.
You can see more of Cassia’s work on her Instagram page : @cassiab