collage::matthew cusick

Check out this collage work using maps by artist, Matthew Cusick. 

I'm trying to figure out how one even approaches this. Do you cut up pieces of ephemera and sort them by color?

And then use the paper as you would paint, by cutting it into 'brush strokes? 

Or do you start with a photograph or a painting and layer on top.....

It's mind boggling and simply, beautiful.

"Collage is a medium perfectly suited to the complexities of our time. It speaks to a society that is over-saturated with disparate visual information. It attempts to put order to the clutter and to make something permanent from the waste of the temporary. A collage is also a time capsule; it preserves the ephemera of the past. It reconstitutes things that have been discarded. A collage must rely on a kind of alchemy; it must combine ordinary elements into something extraordinary."- Michael Cusick