AN OLD SOUL since birth and young only by circumstance, Phoebe Collins has probably spent more time knitting and listening to punk rock than you. An artist by both choice and genetics, her body of work includes sound, image, text, and performance.
She is an alumna of Smith College (Northampton, MA), where she earned a B.A. in Studio Art with a minor in Ancient Studies. Aside from her undergraduate work, she has also studied at the Cooper Union (New York, NY) and DuCret School of Art (Plainfield, NJ). Currently, she lives and works in New Jersey.
Phoebe's portfolio spans a variety of media but centers around printmaking and performance, touching on themes of the body, the sense of self, and ephemerality. She explores the way that smaller parts meet to make a larger whole, as well as the possibilities of making art in multiples. Her process ebbs and flows between a diligently cultivated sense of patience and a tendency to get swept away by new media. She has shown work in group, solo, and online exhibitions, but might be best known for disrupting New England college campuses with ambiguous conceptual art.
Musically, her production style combines dark synths and drum machines with textured vocal layering, and her voice has been compared to both Debbie Harry of Blondie and the sound of a haunted phonograph. Her debut LP, “It’s not enough to be my own body. It’s not enough to know you in dreams,” was released in May 2023, and has since graced the independent airwaves thanks to college DJs across the country.
She is a volunteer for the Loose Ends Project and a member of the Choral Art Society of New Jersey, with whom she performed Joseph Haydn's Missa in Angustiis (among other works) in May. She is also the newest member of the CASNJ executive board, serving as the designer of the group's website, programs, and posters.
Her plans for 2024 include new collaborations, a return to old habits of making, and completing the work left unfinished by a brief and disheartening rendevous with grad school. Stay tuned for whatever is coming next.
We are adrift and in search of a long middle. Making is the only thing that helps.