Today I Celebrate Spring...and Old Children's Books...and collage... and Hoarding-for-when-things might-be-useful-or-I-might-make-something-with-this-one-day!

Today I Celebrate Spring...and Old Children's Books...and collage...

and

Hoarding-for-when-things might-be-useful-or-I-might-make-something-with-this-one-day!

For The Collage Club challenge this month, a little club on Facebook, (GO HERE FOR LINK!) for those who like to do that kind of thing... there was a theme word of "Seasons".And so...the ideas began...

Our little Collage Club has had quite a few new members, and a few people who have not collaged either before or in a really long time.It seems like all of us are enjoying a little creative juice beginning to flow.I am not too surprised...

In my role as an art teacher of little kids, I use collage all the time, even though it is messy, and it is inevitable that the floor almost resembles a Post-Modernist, Abstract Expressionist, art installation all by itself!I love it, the kids love it, because it tends to free you up from the worry of "Am I a good drawer? Can I paint? Am I any good at art?"

Cutting and pasting, trying new combinations, trying new placements, arrangements, objects...you can do it all just by moving things around, a total play before making the commitment of THE ACTUAL STICK.

Making something new out of something that was something else...is really something else! 

I guess SPRING is a bit like that...the reincarnation, the new beginning of growth and another cycle of life beginning. Out here, in the country, I definitely notice it more than when I was a city and coastal dweller.

Collage 1 "SWEET SPRING PET"

So my first collage is made up of old reclaimed, salvaged and gifted children's book pages that I have been keeping in my studio for just such a a thing. Waiting for the day when they might come in handy! I tried to keep it fresh, lots of greens and pastels.Flowers,butterflies, bunnies...lambs and blossoms. After sticking, I used watercolour to extend the grass outside its little printed box,and grow onto other pictures...helping to tie it all together and giving a slight maybe unconscious feeling of creeping growth..same with the little curly vines.

Collage 2 "KEEP CALM AND WONDER"

The second collage I actually completed before the first (confused?!).It started simply, but over the course of an hour and an episode of Offspring, late late late into the night (or was it early into the morning?), it became much more layered!

Again, it started with offcuts from old book illustrations.Then actual bits of an old book...the spine, etc, with some nice torn and fraying fabric that I liked the worn look of.The foreground, the green, is the front of an old atlas, colour photocopied.Then some painted book pages as the sky...but it seemed a bit BLAH.So along came some animals to add some Spring wonder.And mushrooms bursting forth. And birds and butterflies twittering and flying and buzzing around. But no..not enough..and I began sticking stamps on with gusto!  

It all looks a bit busy and fussy..but I reconcile myself with the belief that Spring is a busy bustling time, with things sprouting, growing, twittering, emerging.

And besides, somehow I have to justify that hoarding-for-when-things might-be-useful-or-I-might-make-something-with-this-one-day!