Delightfully decorative though they are, seashells are in fact little more than a by-product of spectacular sub-aquatic life, created by various animals as a form of protection. Still, the ocean ephemera make for marvellous collections, and happily Stephen Eichhorn, the artist behind those history-making collages of cats and cacti, has now taken on the molluscular forms for a new collection in the new issue of feline-focused biannual magazine, Puss Puss.
“I’d been combining plants and cats in various collages for the past couple years,” Eichhorn explains. “While gathering plant and cat books, I had also picked up a few shell and rock books along the way… I never sat down and thought to myself, ‘today I am going to make cats with shells on their heads’ – it’s just something that happened in the studio between a few other projects."
Eichhorn is himself a great lover of felines, making him an ideal collaborator for Puss Puss magazine. “Cats in art and cats as pets are different things to me,” he says. “I love my cat, Kevin, and may have tried to put a plant or two on her head over the years... but my affinity for working with cat imagery comes from a different place to having cats as part of my household.
“I like working with cat imagery for pretty formal reasons; there is a bevy of cat portraiture out there, with such ubiquity to the imagery – regardless of the decade or photographer. The universals of the glossy-eyed, fluffy-cheeked, blank stares of a cat on a gem toned background seem to transcend all advances in photography and technology.”
The series is in good company in the new issue, placed as it is alongside an interview about cats and fast cars with Tyler The Creator, a piece from Pam Hogg about her love of the Sphynx, a dissection of William Burroughs' The Cat Inside, and a beautiful photoseries about the ginger cat.
Issue #3 of Puss Puss magazine is available to buy now.
