What Goes into Collage?

Expression through Collage

When school age children experiment with art, they may get frozen, worrying about literal images. Cutting out a patch of lawn from one magazine, glue. Cut out figures, glue onto the grass with a sky out of tiny squares of blue pasted near more squares on top.

Even with clay, the difficulties arise. One 12 year old's pinch-pot was surrounded with delicate, tiny, spiraling rolls. A word of praise and the curlicues were smashed down to raw thumbprinted clay.

Many adults wrestle with the same dilemma. Figurative images might flow more easily. Trying to overide the critic in our head, we force the abstraction, let go of control, play thundering music to quiet the talk.

Getting lost in collage is a dream come true. Something starts the process, an idea, an image, a color or texture, or just a surface. The commitment is made. Press paper scraps into thick paint. Sketch on the dampness with ink pen. The color spreads and melts. Pour glue. Press in sawdust, iron filings, even fabric or sand for texture. Push some parts into architectural swaths.

For my lost brother I tore a poem out of a book.

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
Langston Hughes

The words cut my heart. So alone. Cover it in paint to stop the bleeding. Scratch through to see again. Smear dirt to numb the blow. Barely readable under broken shells, feathers, sawed splinters of wood and sand. Press it all in for protection. Dry into dullness. Hang it far away to lose the message.

Too reckless to face grief head on. We survive by turning away from the bright headlights.