Is Your Trip Necessary?

Donna Catanzaro is a collector of images: photos from old books, instructional manuals, cookbooks, and magazines; photos that she takes herself of steamrollers, Virgin Mary statuettes and skies. She sees the world as potential parts of a collage – potential backdrops or funky main characters. While she collects the images, she also collects data: information, history, facts and current events.

With images she creates amusing dream-like digital collages in her favorite creative tool, Adobe Photoshop. Donna researches topics and then juxtaposes her own photographs, artwork and text with vintage graphics to create new realities and make comments on popular culture. She examines issues ranging from feminism, gender, women’s issues, politics, war, the environment and more. Her goal is to entice the viewer into the piece through amusement, and then, subtly, challenge them with an underlying complex or sober comment. If she can educate or affect just one viewer to question our culture, then she feels she has accomplished her goal.