collage

Collaging makes sense of my madness. My brain going in so many different directions, ruminating, stewing. It calms me. It puts my inner workings in a physical manifestation.

Collaging is an act of spirituality. One that, even if not every part of me wants to collage, as soon as I start, I fall into it. The portal opens and I'm swimming. Transported. Levitated. I'm not removed from reality, I'm just in another one.

It's not a matter of being particularly good. It's about the process more than the product. I do enjoy what I've created because the product gets to become a bookmark of that moment in time.

I don't set out with any meaning in mind. A theme or an emotion I want to channel. I'm just letting my mind/body/spirit/galactic matter do its thing. Sometimes I look at it and see what might have been going on, but mostly I just relish in the experience.

Maybe that's art? I have a hard time taking on that word and title (artist). But I would say it's an expression of my imagination, my human experience. Whatever we want to call that. I think as the consumer of the thing, you get to decide what you call it.

It's nice not to exploit everything we do for money. It's important to just carve out time to make and do for no other reason than the making and doing. If someone finds meaning, hope, emotion from anything I create, that delights me. Whatever is evoked for them.

The entire process of collaging is enjoyable to me. From sourcing magazines (mostly through the Buy Nothing group I'm in) to carving and cutting into the images. The plotting and placement. Gluing (as seen above, smudged with dirt sometimes).

Scanning these in and getting to see how they turned out. The way some of the paper is so thin, the words seep through.

I'm drawn to paper and drawn to working with my hands and drawing to reusing things we think we're done with to make them into something new. Collaging has become the outlet for my wild mind. Not to control it but to let it morph and manifest in all the ways it needs to.