Collage: A Love Letter

I love collage. It is my absolute favorite thing to do from start to finish. I have had a love of magazines since I was little, so looking through them to find interesting pictures is like a scavenger hunt where I get to make something out of all the things I found at the end. There are many treasures to be found in someone else’s discarded magazines, especially if they are National Geographics. National Geographic features animals and the environment, lots of outer space and technology, and just plain beautiful photos of cultures from around the world. As someone who enjoys photography as well, National Geographics are a dream to look through--and get sucked into the articles. I’ve thought about expanding my photo collection to other magazines, but it just wouldn’t be the same.

In addition to looking for pictures, I enjoy cutting them out! It requires concentration, precision, and patience. When I am cutting out pictures for my collages, I hold my mouth a certain way and get tunnel vision, where nothing exists outside of the action of cutting with my scissors. It’s meditative and helps me practice mindfulness, which is an added bonus. By the time I have finished cutting everything out, I feel very cool, calm, and collected.

After cutting out each picture and meditating, the time has come to create a composition. By this point, I have a whole gallon Ziplock bag full of pictures to go through, so the treasure hunter in me loves this part. I pick out images starting with my favorite ones in various sizes that I can use in the foreground, middle ground, and background. I enjoy creating the illusion of depth in my collages because it adds to the reality of the composition and creates a more believable environment for my images to live in. Sometimes I start with the background first, sometimes I start with a colorful photo that I love and build the composition around it. I probably only use about 25% of the images that I have picked out, but it’s okay because they can go into future collages.

Now that I have all of my photos picked out, it’s time to use a pencil to mark where each photo will go. First, I take a picture of the composition to help me remember the position of each image. Then, I carefully mark where each photo will be placed so that I can cover up unwanted parts of them or show whether they go behind or in front of another photo. Once I have everything marked, it’s time to take a deep breath and carefully take each photo out of the composition so I can start gluing everything down background first.

Gluing down my pictures is actually a bit stressful. There is no going back at this point. If I glue something in the wrong position, it could potentially mess up the rest of the puzzle. Everything depends on how everything else is placed. If I glue something down wrong, and I try to reposition it, if it’s a dark photo, it might get white creases in it or fray the edges. I try not to go down that path!

Once everything is permanently placed, I sit back and admire it. Sometimes it turns out differently than the idea I started with, and I try to sit with it a minute to really appreciate it as a whole new unexpected thing. I know the images that I started with, but something about holding the composition up as a whole with everything working together requires some attention. It deserves to be seen as it is: a beautiful, dreamy puzzle.

My collages are usually fantastical dream worlds that are fun to make and admire. I enjoy the whole process, from treasure hunt to cutting to point-of-no-return glue down. I make each collage a colorful, surreal environment because dreams are also based in reality, beautiful to behold, and fun to dissect the next day. I want each of my collages to be a feast for the eyes that conveys how much I loved the whole process of putting them together. Each collage is made with love, and I hope that radiates from each one.