UV: You use found images in your work, describe your process.
MS: I collect magazines from all eras and cultures. I obsessively cut them up. I have files and files of images and such. And when it comes time to compose I compose...I'm a poet and so it's a complimentary and similar process to receiving language and writing a poem.

UV: When you are creating an image, do you set out with an exact idea or do you let it take shape throughout the process?
MS: A little bit of both. It is a collaboration between me and all that is not me...so, I try to get myself out of the way and let the colors, images, etc., speak and then I being myself back in and approve...or not...

UV: What other artists are your biggest influences?
MS: Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, Joe Brainard, Eduardo Paolozzi, Jess.

UV: How does your art relate to and/or represent your culture and environment?
MS: I'm not a huge supporter of contemporary commodity culture, and so I view my collage-making as a way of cutting up that culture (literally) and recontextualizing it on many levels. It allows me to be simultaneously political, magical, humorous, angry, and playful. There's no avoiding capitalism at this point in time, so collage is, in a way, my own private 'Utopia Parkway.'

UV: This image was used on the CD cover for Spore Attic. What is your experience with having your work mass produced? Do you feel this adds value to the image or detracts from it?
MS: Yes, the image was used on Spore Attic's debut CD...they are extremely close friends of mine and so I'd lend them anything because I agree with their artistic intent. I've also had my collages featured on another CD, Alchemical Elegies, by poet Anne Waldman...it's a choice, obviously I want my work to be seen, but I do have a choice where it goes... again, there's no escaping the evil of mindless consumption, and so as an artist I feel responsible for providing a hopeful slant...the thing with collage is that when the originals are reproduced, a sense of depth and layering is removed and that's a key element of creating by hand that I admire. As long as my intention matches my everchanging integrity, I'm happy...if I made a collage that articulately demonized Coca-Cola, or Catholicism, and Coke, or the Pope, decided to use it for advertisement...that would work...