Collage

I love collage for so many reasons. First and foremost, it looks dang cool. I’m a big fan of artists like Eileen Agar, Nancy Spero, and Raquel van Haver.  Collage subverts our expectations, and it can say so much through the reworking of mundane objects.

Collage is a new(er) form of art and it has a weird history. It began during the Dadaist and Surrealist movements that came out of the first world war. It leans toward the absurd, the bizarre, and the strange, but it does not have to be any one thing. Granted I am not an art historian, so I have embedded a video below that will gives some examples of how famous collage artists have used combining and modifying to create art.

Another reason why I love collage, is that in terms of artistic hobbies, it’s cheap. Usually, all I need are a pair of scissors, a glue stick, and some old magazines. You can absolutely incorporate any other form of media you like, but this is all you need to start. I find my magazines at thrift stores around the city, National Geographic often has some fantastic images, and they are only one dollar at The Salvation Army.

Since I began playing around with collage, I notice it all around me. In fact, as I write this, I am listening to local artist Jesse Roper’s new album Horizons. Check out the cover.

Finally, collage is easy. It doesn’t take much technique, it’s easy to fix your mistakes, and try new ideas with low risk. Sometimes I can find it hard to start, and when that happens I try to find one picture or passage that I feel drawn to, and start building from there.

Here is my collage for this first exploration into “A Change of Art”. When flipping through some pages I have previously cut out to save, I found this passage about one of the Queen’s visits to Toronto. This was right after she passed away, so I chose to build around it.

For my last post of this project, I hope to try digital, or 3D collage. I am eager to implement what will learn into that.

Until next time,

Olivia