Karen Propp

Karen Propp knew from an early age that she wanted to be an artist. Although art remained at the periphery of her life for many years—created privately, shared with friends, and exchanged through mail art—it continued to shape her path. She studied art, worked in fine art sales, and later built a career in advertising, but none of these experiences fully satisfied her need to create. Today, she works in the arts, embracing what has been a lifelong obsession.

Propp creates mixed-media collage and assemblage using vintage ephemera, found objects, and discarded materials gathered from friends, attics, and thrift stores. By removing images and objects from their original contexts and combining them in unexpected ways, she constructs altered narratives that are playful, ironic, and often subversive. Her work explores domestic roles, gender dynamics, personal identity, and the tension between cultural expectations and individual experience. Guided by discovery and experimentation, she embraces imperfection and allows the materials to shape each piece. Propp also sees herself as a steward of forgotten objects and an advocate for the accessibility of collage, finding as much joy in introducing others to the medium as she does in creating the work itself.