college collages

I've never done a collage.  When I was a child, we moved on to the next school just before the collage activities would roll around.  I didn't know til recently that accounted for the eight school districts I attended.  I thought it was related to my continual running off to join the circus.

My first introduction to collage was when it was all the rage among girly groups at college.  It seemed that every dorm room, organization, and sorority would rush the bookstores and snatch up glue, paste, poster board, markers, sparkles, glitter, and such.  I'd see overflowing trash cans with snippets of magazine pages looking like the campus was gripped in the largest random-note demand scam ever.  Even then, I steered clear of the collage craze.

Til today.  My counselor suggested that I use pictures to express a concept that might be difficult for me to put into words.  It's a concept we all grapple with from time to time, but that makes it no less difficult to resolve.  I've been stumped and stalled over the self-identity set of issues for sometime now and the words weren't coming.  Shocking, I know.  But I was not having success with discussing the idea.  So, my counselor suggested the alternative form of expression, collage.

I had no idea I would have such a tough time with it!  Yes, the subject matter is difficult for me to examine.  But it was more than that.  It was the cutting of perfectly good pages (it went against my every grain).  It was the placement of things (cuz I know collages are not supposed to be overly ordered, in columns and rows with matched edges) which violated my sense of order.  It was the fact that I like solids or subtle patterns and collages are deliberately not so.

Then too there is the actual subject matter.  Me.  At first I thought I would have a difficult time finding pix that match my ideas of who I am.  After all, most of the ads and articles boast pictures of beauty and perfection and laughing joyous idiots are are thrilled with their salads, underwear, and medication.  However I did find some pix that I could get to work in some way.

So I went with the theme of transition and may have gone overboard on the before/after shots.  There still plenty of mags left and some poster board left and most of my stick of glue, so should the collaging spirit come calling, I can do another.  But at the moment, I can say that this was an uncomfortable activity that left me with a huge headache and sense of dread.

ugh.  and don't collages resemble those rooms discovered when the crime scene investigators stumble across the shrines the serial killer secretes?  creepy.  shudder.