In the collages of Toshiko Okanoue, the ancient and the modern come together. Born in Kōchi, Japan in 1928, Okanoue studied fashion and drawing at Bunka Gakuin, a vocational college for women in Tokyo. There, she learned about chigiri-e, a centuries-old art form that involves using torn pieces of paper to create new compositions. In the 1950s, Okanoue modernized this traditional technique. She assembled surreal collages using popular American fashion and lifestyle magazines, brought to postwar Japan by Allied Forces. Through collage, she said, “the scraps of my fantasies turned into strangely interesting things.” In Blue Holiday, Okanoue layers images cut from the pages of LIFE magazine, including a photo essay about bats and a portrait of a woman reclining with a cigarette, to create an unsettling scene. Turning the collage over shows Okanoue’s working process, revealing the various sources she used to make this dreamlike piece. See Okanoue’s work up close in the exhibition "In Di...