Let ‘Er Rip: Collage, community, and radical joy
Loneliness is an epidemic in America, and isolation can be particularly difficult for people with disabilities or chronic illnesses. Art is one way to bridge the gap—and a crucial aim of the Let ’Er Rip project, which uses the medium of collage to connect people with a shared passion for paper. Disability aesthetics meets mixed-media experimentation, all in the name of social connection, community, belonging, and radical joy.
This collaboration between Neva DeLashmutt Sincick, who specializes in ripping and tearing books, and Pacific Northwest collage artists coordinated by Torea Frey, highlights the transformative potential not only of the medium of paper but also of cross-disciplinary connections and inclusive communities. The exhibition was on show at 811 Stark in Portland, Oregon, from January to July 2025, and was also covered in About Place journal.
The starting point
Neva likes to tear paper: books, cards, magazines. She turns materials over in her hands, investigating the feel, the form, then letting fly. A bold tear, a lingering glance, a nonchalant fling—soon, she is ringed by ripped pages. Her practice is a singular act of artful destruction. Before you build back better, you have to tear things apart; let ‘er rip.
From destruction, creation
Is a torn page the end of the story? Enter our collaborating artists. Neva’s generative act was the starting point for 14 creatives, who used her fodder to compose new work. Explore the 24 new collage and mixed media piece from this unique collaboration—diverse outcomes from one set of source material, representing an exciting cross-section of contemporary collage.
Participating artists:
Hope Amico, Cheryl Chudyk, Torea Frey, Clive Knights, Andrea Lewicki, Katie & Ash Price, Lara Rouse, Kevin Sampsell, Sumeet Singh, Cherie Savoie Tintary, Greg Traw, Kathryn Kramer Waters, Paul Kramer Waters
Hope Amico
About the artist: Through classes, collage, and the Keep Writing project, Hope Amico (they/them) encourages collaboration, communication and interaction. They host meet-ups, write and print zines, lead workshops, and continue the monthly interactive postcard subscription started in 2008. Born and raised in New England, they currently live in Portland, Oregon. | Visit their website or follow them on Instagram
Top to bottom: Calm Machine #1, Calm Machine #2, Calm Machine #3
Cheryl Chudyk
About the artist: Cheryl Chudyk is a Canadian artist currently based out of Seattle. She has a background in wedding photography, ballet, jazz, and contemporary dance. She dabbles in portraits, poetry, painting, and comics. Her collage work has been published in the America Bar Association’s Nineteenth Amendment Centennial Cookbook, 2 issues of Poetry X Collage, Folklore of the Upper Nithsdale, {th ink} Publication, Finland’s Cults of Life, Italy’s OLTRE, transitional MOMENTS, and 6 issues of Brooklyn-based Cut Me Up Magazine, and she has exhibited her work in the US, Europe, India, and Australia. She has done artist residencies in Scotland, Germany, and the US. She is the president of The Northwest Collage Society and is a member of @thecollageclub on Instagram. She is always looking to make collaborative pieces with other artists. | Visit the Sharp Hands website or follow her on Instagram
Field Trip
Torea Frey
Top to bottom: Inch by Inch, Rainbow Connection, It’s OK To Be Different 1, 2, 3
Clive Knights
About the artist: Clive Knights is an English collagist, printmaker and creator of festival structures based in Portland, Oregon. He is represented by the gallerist Laura Vincent in Portland’s Pearl District. He was the founding director of the School of Architecture at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, and his work is influenced by a career in architectural education, by studies in the phenomenology of the human body, and by a fascination with the potential for innovations of meaning embodied in poetic works. | Visit his website or follow him on Instagram
Top to bottom: Isle of Tears, The Formation of a Cloud, Why Fly?
Andrea Lewicki
About the artist: Andrea Lewicki writes and makes art near Seattle, Washington. She is attracted to abandoned things, starting with the tiny desert community of retirees from her Arizona childhood. Andrea has contributed art to literary magazines including Jelly Bucket, Mud Season Review, Cream City Review, and High Shelf Press. Her work appears in art publications such as Create! Magazine, Cut Me Up Magazine, Juniper Rag, and books released by Jen Tough Gallery. She is the founder of Special Agent Collage Collective, an international gathering in the scissors-and-glue-stick world. Though writing was her first creative love, long before she dared become an artist, she is a late-blooming writer. She has proudly lived half a century without cooking a turkey or wearing a sports jersey. | Visit her website or follow her on Instagram
Joni Mitchell's Carousel Is Missing a Few Horses
Katie Price & Ash Iubatti
About the artists: Katie Price & Ash Iubatti are a Portland-based family that get up to intergenerational collage antics. Katie has been doing collage as an art practice since 2021. Ash has been making and collecting paper treasures since they learned how to wield scissors. In addition to collage, Ash also crochets, paints, and makes miniature worlds. | Follow them on Instagram
Continental Drift
Lara Rouse
About the artist: Lara Rouse is an artist living in Portland, Oregon. | Follow her on Instagram
Delight of Spring
Kevin Sampsell
About the artist: Kevin Sampsell is a collage artist, an editor (Portland Noir and other books), publisher (Future Tense Books), bookstore employee (Powell’s Books), and author (the short story collection Creamy Bullets, the memoir, A Common Pornography and the novel, This Is Between Us). His two latest books are I Made an Accident (Collages and Poems), published by Clash Books in 2022, and Sean the Stick, a collaboration with the artist Emma Jon-Michael Frank that came out in 2024. With Cheryl Chudyk, he co-founded the collage website, Sharp Hands Gallery, in 2020. | Visit his website or follow him on Instagram
Zippity
Sumeet Singh
About the artist: Sumeet Inder Singh is a photographer, artist and writer currently based in Portland, Oregon. He was previously based in New Delhi, India, where he worked for the news magazine India Today. Since 2007, Sumeet has worked for a leading display, design and production house in New York City, where his role includes ideating, designing, planning and managing worldwide flagship retail and fine-art graphics and displays. He is the recipient of an Emerging Photographer of the Year grant from the India Habitat Center. His photographs have appeared in the magazines India Today, Fortune, Forbes, Business Today, Cosmopolitan (India), Golf Digest, Reader's Digest, Omvärlden (Sweden), and The New Statesman (UK). His work also been published in The San Francisco Chronicle, Hindustan Times, and Mail Today. He has held three solo shows of his photographic work. Sumeet’s artistic practice also encompasses collage and mixed-media art; his collage work has been included in shows in Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. | Visit his website or follow him on Instagram
Top to bottom: Landscape I, Landscape II, Foursquare
Cherie Savoie Tintary
About the artist: Cherie Savoie Tintary is based out of Forest Grove, Oregon. She has been exhibiting art for nearly 20 years. She was an analog photographer and due to a medical issue switched mediums to analog collage in 2020. Her work has been published in Kolaj Magazine, Contemporary Collage Magazine, Paris Collage Collective, Special Agent Collage Collective, and many more. When she is not cutting it up, she is baking treats and hanging out with her husband Lee and tiny dog, Dolly. | Follow her on Instagram
Top to bottom: Sid and Marty at Luncheon, Love Birds
Greg Traw
About the artist: Greg Traw was born in Seoul, Korea, and grew up in Casper, Wyoming. Even though he's always been a creative person, he has been many different incarnations in this lifetime alone: filmmaker, professional poker player and dealer, waiter, musician, oil field worker, paperboy, screenwriter, medical guinea pig, journalist, photographer, bud trimmer, roofer and art teacher. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon. | Visit his website or follow him on Instagram
Untitled
Kathryn Kramer Waters
About the artist: Kathryn Kramer Waters is a Portland, Oregon, freelance artist whose work has been featured in publications, galleries, and businesses throughout the northwest. Clients include The Portland Art Museum, Oregon Public Broadcasting, Shriners Hospital for Children, and Seattle Children’s Hospital. | Visit her website or follow her on Instagram
Caught In Quiet Friendship
Paul Kramer Waters
About the artist: Paul Kramer Waters spent decades as an architect/artist and now makes art with his wife full time. He works (mostly) with collage, found-object assemblage, and printmaking. He is based in Portland, Oregon. | Follow him on Instagram
Untitled
Interested to learn more?
Sample collages from the collaboration:
Torea Frey, "Inch by inch," 18"x18", collage, 2024
Torea Frey, "it's ok to be different," 18"x18", collage, 2024
Torea Frey, "Rainbow Connection," 18"x18", collage, 2024