Collage as a Jumpstart

After packing more boxes than I ever imagined, making a cross-country move, and unpacking all those boxes last summer, I needed a reset. I signed up for a collage class of the 4 seasons at the local community center. Having dabbled in a few collage workshops previously, I found the experience introspective, yet aimless at the same time. This class began my prescription for a renewal jumpstart amidst upheaval.

Our small group made a different collage for each season, interspersing each collage with writing about our contained-on-paper musings. We were given ancient symbols for seasons, a feast of colorful papers including wallpapers, buttons, and trinkets overflowing a table. We began with Spring, the farthest season from our summertime outdoors.

I immediately cut some circles — for circle-of-life? My scissor-handed mind turned to flowers emerging from stardust atoms, origins of everything (including origins of writing) and beauty of Earth’s springtime renewal. My eyes chose a wallpaper with a fairy. “What?” a part me asked, but I snipped the fairy (surrounded by stars) anyway. We were time-limited with the structure of the class, but I finished by selecting 3 trinkets from the teacher’s treasure stash – a metal flower button, a delicate paper flower, and a tiny plastic bird with an open beak.   

Here are snippets from my written musings in collage class: Spring has always been one of my favorite seasons. When Winter has been cold and on the fallow side in the garden, Spring bursts through frozen thinking with unending possibilities. I find the Viking symbol for Spring presenting an openness…(checking Google on my cell phone) on Vikings’ Spring: “The Norse goddess Ostara (considered the origin of our word, Easter) is strongly associated with Spring and new beginnings…surrounded by symbols… like flowers and fairies…the Ingwaz Rune, representing a seed or egg, embodies the potential for growth and new life.” When crocuses give birth to themselves, pushing through soil’s tunnel, there is magic for me. I’m even inclined to think of fairies – aren’t they just flowers with petals as skirts? After Winter’s hibernation there is hope with bulbs deciding to stick their necks out…Spring is like that – come out, come out, wherever you are – get blooming.

Collage is a laboratory for artists. When Matisse was in his 70’s, tangled in legal disputes with his wife which resulted in everything in his studio sent to bank cellars, he filled his walls with paper cutouts. Reinvigorated, Matisse discovered what he called “drawing with scissors.” His stained-glass windows for a chapel were designed from his energizing and colorful scissor cutouts. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/mar/29/henri-matisse-cutouts-tate-modern-drawing-scissors

Other artists, including writers, use the joining of collage fragments as a jumpstart for their artistic process. Painter Amy Sillman captures the essence of collage: “…there is something about placing 2 things on the same plane that clarifies their relationship in ways that words, for a time, cannot.”

Collage creates an opening to newness.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

498. What does Spring conjure in your mind?

499. How do you use activities to” reset” yourself?