What have I been doing for 2–WAIT! 3 f’ing years? Let me tell you how I’ve been putting things together: I bought an apartment, renovated it, moved in, and then spent a year of leaks coming through the ceilings of the apartment and living through the remediation and repairs of those leaks.
Although I still haven’t decorated the apartment or hung my art collection, I have settled into my new community. And I sold my home of 13 years–a bittersweet but smart move.
I also kept working at a cancer hospital facilitating collage-making with patients and staff, and joined and spoke at conferences of The National Organization of the Arts in Health.
And all this time, I’ve continued to read books and articles about creativity and about the neurological and psychological effects of making things. I’ve taken a few collage classes at the Art League, and a workshop with uber-collagist, Seth Apter, trying to broaden my perspectives. I’ve been spending more time in museums, studying–really looking closely at paintings and collages and other works of art, melding with the feelings they invoke.
For a time, I was consistent in making my own collages in a journal so I could track the evolution of my work. That’s what I’ll write about here: What I’ve noticed in my work over time both in the journals and elsewhere.
1. Over time, I’ve moved from literal to abstract designs as I focused on feelings rather than storytelling.
From work where text dictated the design (as with these two collages), to collages wherein feeling was built and expressed visually, and afterwards when words might be added if they amplified the feelings that were the collage’s emotional origin.
2. As I fell into abstraction more and more, I began to add fabric scraps, candy wrappers, string, dry cleaning tags, old photos, and “grunged up” newspapers from the 1800s and 1940s. I loved the textures and loved finding connections within the elements which I often highlighted with string. I noticed harmonious elements and began feeling more connected to the Universe through my collage making.
3. As I grew into a wider Universe, I made several bound books built from imagination, not from thinking. Sometimes words were added after the collages were made, linking–or implying linkage–between collages and within the book covers.
I liked the texture of text as a visual element, but didn’t like dictating through words what the collages “meant.” I’d rather the viewer paid attention to their own reactions to a collage, and that they devised their own meaning about my work.
Collage-making has connected me to other humans (in my hospital facilitation work), to communities (in the group collage making I lead in my building and with hospital staff), and has created an expansive connectivity inside my soul with all things Earthbound, and through Time and Space, and elsewhere.
“Perhaps ultimately, spiritual simply means experiencing wholeness and interconnectedness directly, a seeing that individuality and the totality are interwoven, that nothing is separate or extraneous.”
~ Jon Kabat-Zinn
This sense of belonging and interconnectedness has deeply informed my writing as well as my everyday existence. It’s amazing what emerges when you notice how everything is connected.
Turner, I love this progression and watching how your work has evolved. Seth Apter is great and has guided me too. Still many steps behind, but getting there, step by step; piece by piece; thread by thread. Thank you. So excited to see you writing here again. Yay!