West Seattle artist John Schuh claims he was inspired to create collages by a Jorge Luis Borges story. In “The Zahir,” the Argentine author describes a “tiger composed of many tigers.” At Schuh’s first solo show at Artemis Gallery, no tigers are to be found. Rather, Schuh devotes himself to reproducing a 1970s Thunderbird (pictured above), an imaginary cover of the New Yorker, and the Washington Mutual Tower, among other subjects. The huge collages are composed of hundreds of Schuh’s own photos, (or images clipped from the covers of magazines) and then meticulously arranged. “The Car” is a jumble of traffic jams, auto lots, and hundreds of cars new and old. Step back about fifteen feet or so, and from the chaos, an image materializes, as in a Chuck Close painting. There’s an almost obsessive quality to the detail: “The Water” originated as a tiny corner of a print that Schuh enlarged 1600 times and then filled in with cut-and-pasted images from Puget Sound and the Great Lakes. Also on display at this small gallery in the Mount Baker neighborhood are William A. Herberhoz’s assemblages made from flattened antique tin boxes and toys. Artemis, 3107 S. Day St., 206-323-0562, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat. Show ends Sat. Nov. 29. ANDREW ENGELSON
JOHN SCHUH
