Jean Conner: Collage

Edited by Rory Padeken
Contributions by Susan Sayre Batton, Rachel Federman, Rory Padeken, and Kathryn Wade

Designed by Content Object, Kimberly Varella
Casebound Hardcover, 180 pages; edition of 750
Publisher: the San José Museum of Art, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-938175-16-2
Dimensions: 7.125 × 10 in.
Separations: Echelon Color, Santa Monica, CA
Printing: Permanent Printing Limited, Hong Kong


San Francisco–based artist Jean Conner’s collage work, a practice she has been exploring with critique and humor for over sixty years, was shown at the San Jose Museum of Art. Jean Conner: Collage features work from the 1950s to the present and highlights Conner’s witty and critical observations of mass-media, gender, nature, and consumerism. 

This book, published on the occasion of this first solo show explores Jean Conner’s collage practice as both personal practice and social commentary. Companion essays focus on inspiration taken from spiritual realms, to the world of Mad Men, to cinematic inspiration and commentary on traditional uses of collage as it relates to domestic life and gender. Corresponding thematic plate sections follow with pearlescent Constellation Jade Riccio Fedrigoni end and section papers recalling materials used by collage artists of an earlier era. The hardbound cover features an immersive full bleed Conner collage and bronze foil stamps.

The artist’s first monograph presents new scholarship on her work. Edited with an introduction by Rory Padeken and essays by Rachel Federman, associate curator of modern and contemporary drawings at The Morgan Library & Museum and Kathryn Wade, former assistant curator, San José Museum of Art. Their essays situate Conner’s work among her artistic peers and within the pre-modern histories of collage. The book also features 85 color reproductions of Conner’s collages, many previously unpublished, and an illustrated biography with photographs of the artist throughout her life.

Photography by Ian Byers-Gamber