Liz Cohn and Others: Playing with a Full Deck
The 12 x 16 Gallery / Portland, OR / May 3 - 27, 2012
and traveling (schedule posted below review).

The 12 x 16 gallery, located in a courtyard off 13th Avenue in south east Portland, Oregon, is the site of "Playing with a Full Deck," Liz Cohn's show of almost 1600 altered playing cards created in collaboration with 205 artists from around the world.

Ms. Cohn is a soft-spoken but clearly hard-working collage artist who spent more than eighteen months creating and assembling the works for this exhibition and a day and a half with five helpers installing the works in this show. Forty-two of the works are displayed in mounts and frames hand-made by Liz herself. The rest form an undualting wave pattern which wraps around the gallery.

The project which has resulted in this show started in June of 2010. "I missed the fact that people don't send actual letters anymore," said Ms. Cohn in a recent conversation, "and this guaranteed that I would get cool things in the mail."

While some of the altered cards in the exhibition are solo creations by Ms. Cohn, the majority are the works of two collaborators. Others circumnavigated the globe gathering design contributions by three to five artists.

In the case of collaborations begun by Ms. Cohn, the altered card was typically mailed to a second collaborator who was free to add to or subtract elements on the card. If the second artist felt the card was still incomplete, they might mail it to another contributor until it was declared finished and ultimately returned to the artist/curator.

While the exhibition can be best appreciated by visiting the gallery, Ms. Cohn has created individual web pages for each of the works and these can be seen on her website at www.lizcohnartstudio.com (click on ‘playing card collabs’ in the header). All works are for sale and can be purchased through the website for $40 each including postage. A book including seventy-five of the images is also available.

- JT, May, 2012