Alison Kurke is an increasingly grumpy American collage artist currently residing in the Scottish Borders. She has attained an age that signifies you no longer care where she was educated or worked (60+), and usually claims to be Canadian under Republican presidents. She has amassed a gigantic trove of old paper, ephemera and oddities that she is truly determined to sort one day. Truly. Increasingly drawn to her studio to avoid the staggeringly disappointing real world, she enjoys collaborative collage through a number of groups and circles internationally. She has exhibited in various places and taken part in various gatherings. She makes collage not to document her life, not to illustrate the issues of the day, not to partake in universal human truths, and not purely out of nostalgia for design and imagery of the past, but because she likes cutting things out, combining them and pasting them down in pleasing arrangements. Retirement has its advantages. She loves paper, collage, bookmaking and monoprinting. *Also collage collaborations, red wine, perfume, swimming pools, taking classes, polysyllabic words, people-watching, telling others what is really on her mind, atheists, chocolate, and swearing. She really likes swearing, most especially in election years. She hates artists’ statements, posers, guns, right-wingers, liver, bad public transportation, and small-minded people.