Paul Bright

Paul Bright began using sound for his work only recently, in 2008, as he expanded his approach to collage. Noticing the sounds in the environments where he collected materials for his "physical" collages, he thought of similarly using the aural elements to create sound collages. With the advent of small, high resolution digital recorders, he was able to collect sound as spontaneously as torn posters or paper, an important quality for an artist who prizes the dialogue he establishes with "the found". He forms the sound collages much like he does his material ones, spontaneously structuring them of discrete parts. They are not intended to be narratives or "sound-walks"; they are abstract works built from fragments of the familiar. Bright uses our urge to identify specific sounds as a lure into "sound-objects" that frustrate that desire for definition and narrative completeness. The sounds remain themselves, but they are relocated into the new context the artist has constructed for them. Bright received his BFA from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC in 1986. He has exhibited the sound collages in tandem with material collages in recent exhibitions in Italy and Canada. Since the late 80s, he has shown in numerous venues in Switzerland, Canada, Germany, Italy, and the US. He has also received grants and residencies, in the US and Canada.