No. 69 - Collage to the Rescue, Part Two
Wherein I shake out my sillies with paper and glue
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I started making collages in my sketchbooks during my Fine Arts degree at Concordia University, though I majored in painting and making collages definitely wasn’t required. When we moved from Montréal to Victoria and I had a wee baby and very little room, I kept making them because it was something that could be done at the kitchen table and quickly whisked away if necessary.
I made collages for many years. I collected stacks and stacks of vintage books, magazines, decorative papers, and maps, which gave me a rich well to draw from when it came time to choose images to put together. Thanks to working at an art supply store for seventeen years, I learned a lot about glues, brushes, types of paper, lightfastness, protecting your artwork, making it durable and the like. All this I applied to my collage making.
I grew afraid of painting. It became impossibly loaded because I was supposed to be so good at it but I couldn’t do it anymore. Little Miss A+ who’d become so rusty I could hardly put a dab of paint down on a surface without immediately backing out of the room with a glassy-eyed stare on my face. I didn’t know what I now understand: that it’s normal to get out of practice, that you have to give yourself time to get back in the saddle.
Collage was easy and fun, and even made me laugh. What’s not to like? I did eventually manage to get back into painting, but I still return to collage when I need a break, or an “easy in” to the studio. For me it’s the artistic equivalent of shaking your sillies out. COLLAGE TO THE RESCUE!
Back in March of 2021 I was working on a series of paintings called How to Stay Safe as a Child for my Life’s Work: A Visual Memoir project and it was thoroughly depressing me. As in, I felt very down.
To be clear, I’ve never been physically abused. But as a sensitive child, neither did I feel safe or emotionally tended to growing up. So many people reached out to me saying that these images resonated with them that I have to assume this to be common.
Recalling those feelings and working on this series proved to be much more difficult than depicting my experiences with my mother’s dementia, which is what the bulk of Life’s Work is about. This series was meant to be longer, but I felt so leaden with the weight of psychic waste that I had to stop.
I realized I needed to take a complete break from the Life’s Work project and do some collage as a palette cleanser, as it were. And lo, it was good. I put away the ink paintings and made two large collages: Joan and Montana.
Making collages did indeed rescue me, and you can read about that here if you like:
In that post I wrote about wanting to make a collage tutorial video, and that’s exactly what I did the following month, April 2021. I’d recently acquired a fancy new phone with a high falutin’ camera. I downloaded and taught myself a video-making app, and I made myself a Collage Class.
People like it! Some reviews:
"Thank you for making the video! It’s so easy to follow and understand. I’ve never felt so inspired, seriously” —Lauren Wilde
"I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your collage class. It was fun and instructive and inspiring. It gave me all sorts of ideas. I particularly love the class notes which give me something I can refer back to." —Sheila Norgate
"The class was terrific—very practical and hands on. The examples of collage work were varied, interesting, and inspiring" —Susan Olding
"It was very educational and also I loved your punk sensibility! Thank you! —Sarah Leavitt
“Just watched the class. It is so great! It got me excited.” —Laurel Purvis
I cover materials, choosing materials, cutting implements, composition, your work area, substrates, cutting vs. tearing, gluing, best practices, painting on collage, protecting your artwork, and different ways of approaching collage.
It’s just under an hour long and comes with eleven pages of class notes. It’s 35 lousy Canadian bucks, people! Find more information here.
Buy my COLLAGE CLASS! For yourself or someone else 😃
(Note for collage nerds: Since making this class, the glue I recommend—Yes Paste—has doubled in price, making it cost prohibitive. I used Nori Paste for the collages I made last week and while it’s certainly less of an investment, it fell slightly short in the “stick flat” department. It’s a bit too wet, so you have to be careful not to use too much).
Anyhoo. Back to collage rescuing me.
As hinted at in my last post, it’s been a rough year. There have been a lot of basic survival issues to deal with, and that hasn’t left a lot of energy or mental bandwidth for creativity. When I do make it out to my studio, like today, it depresses me to see my Life’s Work graphic memoir work sitting there unattended, and my notes and dog-eared books set aside for my future journaling workshop. UGH, as they say. I almost feel like I can breath again, but I also feel like I need to be recalibrated, or have a system de-frag as we used to do with computers in olden times. Where can you get a cheap de-frag these days?
Which finally brings me to last week. I had nuthin’ for Feed the Monster and I couldn’t imagine how I was going to muster the mama to be generative in any way. I sometimes fall into the mindset of “why bother going to the studio, what’s the point? Nothing’s happening there, it’s probably better if I plug away at something practical that’s killing me but needs to get done. Just do that thing”.
NO! SAYS I
I forced myself to the studio and remembered that not only could collage rescue me, but could also be fodder for a Feed the Monster post (complimentary trade secret 😂). I sat at my table for a couple of hours, cutting out images and listening to a Design Matters interview with Gloria Steinem. I was messaging with Jill Margo of The Creative Good and wrote that I felt like I was doing the old “fake it till you make it”, as I still felt shell-shocked and not particularly nourished by working in my studio. She wisely pointed out that faking it till you make it is all the same to your nervous system, so “faking it” is a legitimately good place to start. YES, thank you!
Artist, heal thyself.
I’m not an art therapist. But I can tell you unequivocally that making art is therapeutic—whether you consider yourself creative, or an artist, or not. It’s an alchemical process that will leave you transformed. I want to say that in this it’s similar to writing in a journal—and it is—but making images is pre-language, if you will, and works its magic in different ways.
Collage is especially conducive to working this kind of magic because it’s non-threatening, inexpensive, and fun. Finding disparate images to put together can be surprising and hilarious. There’s an element of unpredictability that’s very freeing. Anyone can do it, with impunity.
The next day I went to the studio again to put my wee collages together with the images I’d cut out, and I made a hyperlapse film of the process (see below). During that session in the studio, I did recognize at one point that time had stopped and I was fully immersed in what I was doing. Ah-ha… some nourishment was seeping in.
When you’ve been through a lot, it takes a while for your system to readjust back to your usual baseline. It’s not just mental—it involves your body, your entire system. Partially you’ve become so used to being embattled that your system seeks out more of the same—that’s now what it knows and it looks for that hit. You have to gently lead yourself back to basecamp by reintroducing the good things you know you love and need.
As usual, I’m writing this as a means to remind myself.
Strictly speaking, Ghost Boy and his Horse would be considered mixed media as I’ve painted on top and added silver leaf. A horse by any other name…
I have no fucking idea what I’m doing but I keep trying to do it. If you haven’t already I’d love it if you subscribed, and I promise I’ll keep getting better. I don’t have a formula for Feed the Monster posts, but for me the impulse is always the same—to feed that monster. The monster is me; the monster is you.
Bless this mess.
Old favourites:
SOME STUFF!
A documentary about ink on CBC Gem featuring Toronto ink maker Jason Logan. If you like ink, pigments, chemistry, foraging, magnetic ink made from guns or calligraphy brushes the size of a large mop, you’ll like this film.
What Are Dreams For? A fascinating article in The New Yorker
A Rickie Lee Jones performance that always gives me shivers
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Buy my Collage Class—$35 CAD for a one-hour prerecorded download. See some reviews!
Listen to my interview with Sheryl MacKay on CBC’s NxNW here (starts ten minutes in). It’s all about Life’s Work: A Visual Memoir
Buy my book 100 Days of The Artist is Present
Visit balampman.com
There's always Instagram
Curious...how do you know when “fake it til you make it” is the best option?