On November 13, 2011, Capricious Publishing celebrated the release of artist K8 Hardy’s latest book, Frank Peter John Dick. Hardy’s work riffs on pop culture and all the images we encounter as consumers. The art she exhibits are photographs and sculptures, but part of her process is gathering masses of images from disparate sources and obsessively collaging them together. In a sense, these collages are edits of photos torn from magazines, printed advertisements, and other visual imagery that Hardy finds compelling. Yet they also include her darkroom test strips and snapshots found at the junk store. These collages were never originally intended for exhibition or print, but merely research for the artist’s work. It was only after a few people saw them in her studio that she was encouraged to show them. For this reason, the collages are powerful and weighty; each is it’s own essay. Hardy has made visual examinations that deal with complicated ideas, issues of representation, phenomenon in style, and playful contemplations of fashion.
