about psycherotica

collage

The magic of using common imagery from popular culture to explore, de-construct and reassemble one’s perspective provides an endlessly rich opportunity for insight & creative expression. It’s through these unexpected juxtapositions that the logic of linear thinking is stripped away, revealing something both indicative of human experience & transcendent of it....

bio

Via Keller (that's me) is a self-taught artist, web designer & psyche-naut who fled the midwest in the late 1970’s to find herself….elsewhere. An affinity for the medium of collage emerged from the serious play & free-form experimentation associated with the production of Short Fuse, a xerox magazine published in Santa Barbara. It was during this time, in the mid-1980's, that i was fortuitously introduced to the work of Jess (Collins), San Francisco's superb beat-era paste-up artist, whose art & correspondence was my greatest source of guidance & inspiration. (He also served a lovely and gracious lunch when i visited his home in '94.)

Later, i made a few appearances in Magical Blend Magazine, as both artist & writer (see articles below), under my given name of Vic(toria) Keller, shortening my first name in order to obfuscate my gender, which amused me at the time. In 1992, a collage of mine appeared, uncredited, on the back cover of Manic Street Preachers’ double CD Little Baby Nothing when an enthusiastic fan sent a copy of it to the band. In 1994, i was asked to contribute nine illustrations to Timothy Leary's Chaos & CyberCulture, after which i joined with other contributors for some of Tim’s last public appearances. Later that year, the metal band Nevermore used one of my "Cyberculture" images for their European tour T-shirt. Selections from the Leary book were later featured in the German edition Psychedelika, Kultur, Vision und Kritik (2003) compiled by Wolfgang Sterneck. Somewhere along the way, i reconfigured my given name once again to become Via.

Settling happily into rural valley life, i've taught classes at several county schools while contributing to local events & various commercial projects. In recent years i designed CD covers & websites for the bands Outersect & II Big, & have had my artwork animated & projected by the talented folks at Coil & Radiant Atmospheres for various Bay Area events. I've also made illustrations for a book and an audio CD published by Sentient Publications & Wetware Media out of Boulder, CO. I am currently working on 2 more CD covers, due out in spring 2011, and my originals are on display at Beat Art Gallery in Ukiah, CA. See our published works page for examples of posters, book & CD covers, web work & miscellaneous co-creations. Thanks so much for visiting!

Further musings: Why art? and Art First! (on Ruby the Maladjusted Elephant)