General Submission Guidelines:

Each published issue features a curatorial call for the next issue by a guest curator, asking artists to consider specific concepts and approaches to collage. Submitting artists always use the previous issue of Cut Me Up as raw material to cut up and transform, in response to the curatorial call.

Call for Issue 15: Summer 2025
Curated by Todd Bartel and Paloma Trecka

Deadline for submissions: April 1, 2025

Obstructions and Disruptions

Obstructions and disruptions are generally considered unwanted, but they can just as easily point toward and instigate creative possibility. The accidental spilling of coffee over a collage in progress can be viewed as ruin or enhancement. For this call, curators Todd Bartel and Paloma Trecka invite artists to create collages that embrace the unexpected through visual, rhythmic, emotional, or conceptual disruptions.

– Todd Bartel & Paloma Trecka


To submit artwork responses:

  • Incorporate the unexpected.

  • Intervene order with disorder.

  • Disrupt and counterbalance.

  • Break harmony with dissonance.

  • Expose underlying patterns and superimposing structures.

  • Remove pieces from the whole.

  • Consider the unfinished as complete.

All eligible submissions must:

  • Incorporate some portion of Cut Me Up Issue 14.

  • Be vertically oriented and sized at 10.25 x 8.25".

  • Be flatbed scanned at 600dpi and saved in .TIF format, or

  • Photographed with a digital SLR camera at the highest resolution setting — 600dpi strongly prefered; 300dpi minimum resolution.

Send submissions via the form linked here: submissionform

Issue 15 Curators Todd Bartel and Paloma Trecka

Todd Bartel is a visual artist, teacher, writer, and independent curator. He teaches drawing, painting, collage, and conceptual art at the Cambridge School of Weston (MA). He is the founder of the school’s Thompson Gallery, where he mounted 50 exhibitions between 2007-2020.

Instagram: @collagehead | Web: toddbartel.com

Paloma Trecka is an artist and educator based in Chicago. She studied studio art and design for the Theater in Montreal at Concordia University (BFA). She currently teaches about the history of animation at Columbia College Chicago and DePaul University.

Instagram: @paloma_shaloma_xicago | palomashaloma.com

Cut Me Up Issue 15 will be published on July 1, 2025