Ellen Lanyon at Printworks

Ellen Lanyon, Study for Crimping and Pinking, 2010.

Ten years ago, Ellen Lanyon created a series of pen-and-ink drawings to catalog her collection of odds and ends.In 2003, master printer Kip Gresham translated them into fine facsimile prints, publishing them in five large, fold-out books (on view at Printworks).

The artist returned to those prints to make the collages in “Index Extended,” photocopying them and arranging their elements in various combinations. The use of photocopies strips away a bit of the sacredness surrounding original art objects, giving her the freedom to form new ideas from her own visual vocabulary. Repeating certain images, surprisingly, helps. (Lanyon favors dials, scales, old engravings of exotic wildlife and flora, and kitsch such as statues of pipe-smoking animals.) An old engraving of an ACME egg grader takes on a different meaning when placed among tropical birds instead of alongside a woman in a bathing suit.

Lanyon’s collection reflects her taste for the weird and slightly gruesome. (See the purse made out of an alligator’s paw in Bodega Bay and the taxidermied frog strumming a little harp in the hilarious All the Frogs.) Yet she uses this oddball ephemera to construct some truly beautiful Surrealist scenes. Though “Index Extended” feels somewhat one-note, it should prompt visitors to learn more about Lanyon’s 60-plus years of artistic engagement with her world.