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26 Simple Ways to Nurture Your Creative Life

#3: Collage Your Fragments

Remember the lessons, discover your dreams, and celebrate the variety and contrast in your life.

By Chris Dunmire

Carefully tearing the photo from the page and gluing it down with precision, I could see that the shiny new motorcycle was an important piece in Derek’s collage. Several times he asked for scissors, but this was the “scissor-less” collage art camp I was facilitating, with an emphasis on spontaneous “ripping play.”

Derek eventually accepted that he wouldn’t be cutting out his treasured pictures with exactness, and improvised by spending extra time tearing them, because to him, they were not mere pictures. They were the prelude to a dream, to something larger, faster, shiner to come in his life. But for now, the collaged pieces composed the longings of an 11-year-old boy.

Collage College

“Collage: An artistic composition of fragments (as of printed matter) pasted on a surface.” — Merriam-Webster Dictionary

I’ve been immersed in a lot of collage-related work this month. It began when I published a spectacular piece on the Creativity Portal Web site by Angi Sullins titled, “Mentor Mania” in which Angi relates how she used collage art to explore the mentors in her life. Next came a reworking of my Collage Cubies Project, an innovative form of 3D Paper Sculpture I developed in 2005 to promote ‘thinking outside the box’ of traditional artistic expression. Both of these activities flowed nicely into a collage art "Creativity Camp" I facilitated in my backyard for a small group of neighborhood kids, in which Derek* was a participant.

In preparation for the camp, and to help inspire the children, I created four collages using simple cutting and pasting techniques. One featured paper fish swimming around a fishnet with several caught in the net waiting to be pulled in for food. To make the collage I combined colored paper, torn and cut magazines bits, a piece of red netting from an onion bag, and a subtle statement about harvesting fish for food.

Interestingly, while working on the collage late one evening I had the 1992 movie Grand Canyon starring Danny Glover and Kevin Kline playing in the background. If you’re unfamiliar with the movie, here’s a plot summary from the Internet Movie Database:

“Grand Canyon revolved around six residents from different backgrounds whose lives intertwine in modern-day Los Angeles. At the center of the film is the unlikely friendship of two men from different races and classes brought together when one finds himself in jeopardy in the other's rough neighborhood.”

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* Not his real name.