Like most great things in this world, collage has been mocked as a girlish hobby – something tweens make for their locker, say, or a cool-but-grungy creation for zines. But the work and precision required for collage creations can and do reach the highest levels of fine art. For instance, artist Ashley Swarts utterly smashes any preconceptions of collage as a lesser art form. In “Waiting for a Sign,” her debut gallery show at McLennon Pen Co., Swarts presents work so stunningly polished and overwhelming it cannot be dismissed.

“Waiting for a Sign” revolves around, well, signs. Swarts takes inspiration from vintage road signs, re-creating actual marquees from different locations, using her vast collection of color-coded clippings. At first glance each piece looks like a grimy, lived-in sign, an interesting but static image. Upon closer examination, rich details consume the viewer. Each line and texture, made from tiny pictures or cut-up text, creates an epic “I Spy” that could take hours to fully unpack.

After past experience in printmaking and graphic design, Swarts found an appreciation for piecing together new realities through art. One of her biggest sources are pulpy 1950s romantic comics, full of ladies who love, lose, and love again. “I love cutting them up and giving them a new story,” Swarts told me during a conversation at Slowpoke, the tattoo studio she runs with Alex Parker. Swarts sees her artistic rebirth of these magazine women as an empowering step toward something greater.

This show is the culmination of 13 years spent collecting magazines, pinning images on the wall, and experimenting with ways to preserve and present final products. An early version of one work, Hey Little Cobra, can be seen in the Slowpoke studio. Both Cobras show a midcentury Holiday Inn sign. The Slowpoke prototype has large swaths of magazine pages preserved in encaustic wax. It’s good, but less striking than the 2024 version at McLennon Pen Co., where a swoop on the side of the sign vibrates with images of smiling Fifties housewives, shiny cars, and exuberant ad copy alongside sketches of flowers and phonographs. The words “Holiday Inn” leap toward the viewer thanks to Swarts’ latest innovation – resin instead of wax. She smoothly curves the resin around her pieces, a finishing touch gallery owner Jill McLennon describes as delicious, like delicately layered candy. Not only does the resin add a polished gloss to the final work, but Swarts also explodes the collage pieces throughout five to seven resin layers. It produces the slightest touch of depth, a dimensionality that has to be seen in person. Sugar Shack, one of the smallest works, brilliantly exhibits this with neon red lettering on a Dairy Queen sign hovering above an ice cream cone.

Sometimes the signs turn into unexpected portraits. Soul Limbo, an absolute stunner of a piece, features a leaping fish crowning announcements for “dancing” and “cocktails” beneath. Swarts told me the sign evolved into a testament to her father. Bits of his personality emerged through the clippings, outlining a complicated figure who loved women and booze, but also enjoyed the outdoors and fly-fishing. Soul Limbo stands out in the exhibit, not only due to the biographical elements, but also since it’s a rare solid background behind the collaged sign. The single color makes the entire surface crisp against a vivid red. Most of the other pieces have whimsical clouded backdrops, fluffy swirls of blue and orange. All these backgrounds could theoretically be found in nature, but they’re all more vibrant, more enchanting than reality. It’s another emblem of possibility, shown through skies richer than mortal eyes usually see.

Swarts’ work shows the power of the small pieces that make up our world. It’s about creating something new instead of following a prescribed life path. Swarts thinks too much of her life has been wasted in waiting. “Waiting for a sign that my life is useful, or that I’ll be loved, and it just felt like there was going to be this pivotal moment,” she told me. “And then I realized that that wasn’t how life worked. Life is whatever you want it to be. And so I made the fucking sign, and I don’t have to wait for it anymore.”

Ashley Swarts: “Waiting for a Sign”

McLennon Pen Co. Gallery

Through December 7 (by appointment only)