High-Density Collage by Emily Lavalier

Emily is a paper artist born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has a BA in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and while she was involved in many art classes throughout her schooling, Emily is a self-taught collage artist working in a unique style she calls “High-Density Collage.”

After graduating and navigating through multiple career paths the one constant was Emily’s love for making collage greeting cards. From 2007-2014 Emily made cards for her friends and taught after school art classes, while working full time in both human services and the travel industry.

In 2014, while working in a tap room in Minneapolis, Emily was introduced to many artists who made their living selling art. The best piece of advice she got was- “If you want to be an Artist, just make art.” That year she started making what she called “large scale greeting cards” and getting them professionally framed.

In 2015 Emily was invited to show during Art-A-Whirl, a large open studio event in Northeast Minneapolis, and in 2016 she participated in her first outdoor art show- Stone Arch Bridge Art Festival. It wasn’t until 2020 when Emily started traveling across the country for more high-end art shows that she was able to take the dive in to full-time creating.

The collage work Emily creates is very time-consuming, involving many layers of paper over hundreds of hours. Her style of work, the covering and building up of details over time, can also be seen as a reflection of how each one of us is created through layers over time. These layers are sometimes unseen and sometimes on the surface, but each bit of texture is what creates the perfect original.