The Magic of Collage

I’ve been playing with digital art for about 8 months now, and in that time, I’ve fallen in love with the practice + process of collage -- not only as an art form but also as a way of seeing + relating + building.

In my collage art, I take bits from lots of different images + put them together in new ways.

Which is a fractal of something much bigger.

In a way, anything we make is collage, and creating collage art has tuned me in to how I practice this -- and how I might practice it more in other ways.

First, collage requires us to make the most of what we have.

When I make my art, I’m working with the images I can find (a built-in limit + occasional source of frustration).

Sometimes, I have a vision in my head, but I can’t find what I’m looking for, so I have to use something else + try to fit it all together in a different way.

But getting inventive when the raw materials are less than ideal is a useful skill in art + life.

I think of this past year -- how we all did what we could to make life livable + functional in a pandemic -- how we figured out zoom + home offices + virtual school, explored new hobbies, connected in different ways, and more.

Life became a patchwork of different threads. And that definitely didn’t make it all okay. There’s been lots of grief, loss, and chaos.

But lots of creativity + possibility + change too. Because we had no choice but to rearrange the pieces of our lives to create a different collage than the one we expected.

I also think about how a collage often starts with one tiny magical thing.

Sometimes, a complete vision comes to me for an art piece that I want to bring into form. But more often than not, I start with one bit of one image that feels electric + alive -- a person, shape, landscape, object, etc. -- and then explore how I might build a whole story + complete work of art around it.

These fragments + treasures become the magnets that pull in more ideas + move the currents of creativity.

Sometimes, all we need is one bit of magic, one touchstone that feels alive, one special ingredient to get started.

We can build a lot from a single seed of possibility.

And finally, there’s magic in collage around what happens in the layering, touching, and relating.

Because a collage is more than a collection of images that look good together. It becomes something other + something more.

The bringing together of what we don’t always expect but inexplicably works is a wonder.

It opens possibility, challenges expectations, and inspires us to keep exploring + creating.

So if this resonates, I definitely recommend collage as a creative + spiritual practice. What might you collect, bring together, and create?

Art + Activism

For the past two months, I’ve been absorbed in an art project.

The creative process (+ medium I’m working with, digital collage) is reminding me that art isn’t so much about creating something from nothing. It’s about tinkering with what we have, bringing pieces together, exploring the edges and spaces between, overlaying different visions, ideas, and possibilities, and being resourceful with our raw materials.

Art is not a thing that’s separate from where I am or what I have.

And what I have is more than enough to get started.

This makes me think of activism too (another theme of the summer) and all the ways art + activism -- as practice, strategy, and being -- are linked.

Both evoke visions of beauty + call forward possibility. Both disrupt + subvert the status quo. Both summon our deep humanity. Both are projects in story-telling + meaning-making. Both are about creation at their core.

And the more I see this art-activism connection, the more I recognize that what keeps me stuck, frozen, and not moving forward in my art often parallels what keeps me stuck, frozen, and not moving forward in my attempts at activism: perfectionism, fear of failure + mistakes + discomfort, disconnection from embodied knowing, and self-doubt around my capacity to create beauty + do things that matter in the world.

In that mode, I’m missing what we’re actually doing in both projects: Starting where we are. Working with what we have. Holding the vision. Taking small but steady steps in that direction.

The path forward isn’t perfection; it’s devotion. It’s not about burning all our fuel to jump over the chasm between Here + There, bypassing everything in between. It’s about building a bridge, one stone at a time.

Whether it's a painting, a movement, or a better world, we create by bringing together what works better together than alone: our raw materials + resources, our visions + voices, our power + our imaginations.

How might you make good + creative + life-affirming use of yours?

Creativity and the Deeper Thing

On the creative path, there are all sorts of ways to get tangled up and pulled off course by fear, perfectionism, and beliefs we hold around productivity, enoughness, and visibility. It’s a simple enough (though not always easy) process to dive into these pieces and do the work to get somewhere good, but in my experience, there is another essential step in uncorking creative flow.

And it’s basically finding a way to remember that creativity is always bigger and deeper than the thing we’re creating.

I’ve found it helpful to have regular conversations with my creativity, and here’s one way to do this: remember a time you felt connection, exhilaration, flow, resonance, freedom, love, etc. in your creative process; get anchored in how that feels or shows up in your body; and then step into that feeling to “take on” its consciousness and channel its energy. From there you can journal from its perspective, ask it questions, or allow it to guide your creative process.

This is what I consistently find when I do some variation of this exercise with clients: there is always a depth of wisdom, spirit, or vastness present. Which doesn't surprise me because our creativity is a holy and alive thing.

And when we can connect to the depth and vastness of our creativity, we step into a whole other frequency of energy, one that can't really support or sustain our fear.

And while it may not be possible to live here all the time, even a glimpse of it can start to change things.

And this is why it matters to me that more folks find a way to unleash their creative power: because it’s more than what we make with it – it’s the energy inside and beyond us – the light, connection, and resonance we share with the world and pour into the collective.

So if you feel creatively stuck, see if you can find your way into the deeper thing, the underlying energy of power that wants to pull you into all manner of creative goodness and possibility. I'd love to hear how it goes : )

Art as Hope

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that art reemerged in my life at this particular moment – that my impulse to begin tinkering with watercolors happened in the midst of deep grief, hard uncertainty, and painful despair.

There have been some really hard things happening in our country and world, and I realized at some point along the way that denying, minimizing, or bypassing any of it would never work. I had to accept its realness. My task is not to make the horror other than it is. My task is to find a depth of beauty that matches the depth of despair – to find a goodness that can stand its ground and hold its truth in the presence of swirling grief.

When we have been pulled into new depths of despair, it simply means we have to go deeper to find a love that can meet it.

Art helps.

When I’m tempted to believe I’m powerless, creativity reminds me that no, actually I am still in possession of immense power. Because when I’m creating, I’m using the power of my aliveness to dream up visions, put energy into form, and recognize beauty. Art – my own and others – reminds me that aliveness is thriving, as is our collective power.

In other words, art is an answer to despair and creativity is an act of hope. Because it’s hard to keep believing there is no possibility when I am literally creating it inside of me.

So please keep creating, friends. Your art matters.

The World Needs Your Art

Six months ago, I was not painting. In fact, I had not picked up a paintbrush in more than a decade.

Five months ago, I brought home some watercolor supplies and started dabbling.

Three months ago, I started painting a lot and sharing my work.

Art has been the lightning-bolt epiphany of my 2018.

I am so happy to be making art, and although I can appreciate and understand the timing of it all, I am also sad there was a decade of my life that I wasn’t.

I had two primary objections to creating art of my own: I believed it didn’t really matter (or at the least the kind of art I would make wouldn’t really matter), and I believed I was not artistically gifted enough.

The shift started when I heard Fabeku Fatunmise talk about art and how/why it matters - that art is a transmission of energy and talisman of magic. I began to see for myself how art is a portal into a language, experience, and world beyond words, how art creates a bridge into what we can access no other way.

I began to notice how art was transforming me. And then I began to imagine how I might take the energy inside of me and make it into shapes, forms, and images on paper too.

Suddenly, it didn’t really matter how much talent I had. I wasn’t trying to paint a picture that could be mistaken for a photograph; I was trying to take an energy inside of me and make a thing that transmitted that same power and frequency.

Art has created so much magic and connection in my life this year – as I’ve taken in others’ art and shared my own.

If you have your own objections to making whatever art calls to you, I hope you recognize those as the lies they are - and see that the world needs your art and will be a more magical and alive place if you create it.

Language, Art, and Possibility

When I was 15, I decided I was going to learn Spanish. I studied hard in school and lived in Peru for four months to make that happen, and learning (and more or less retaining) Spanish remains one of the life accomplishments I’m most proud of and thankful for.

Language is a dazzlingly gorgeous thing.

Held within any language is an entire universe. I quickly found that learning Spanish was not a simple acquisition of skill. It was a newfound connection to millions of people and many more throughout time. Entire lives and civilizations lived and died inside this container of words.

Language holds so much. Power. History. Culture. Connection.

As I learned, I was incrementally granted access to whole new schemas of meaning and frameworks of reality. My brain sprouted new pathways. There were also Spanish-induced changes to my embodied self. The muscle memory of my mouth, cheeks, and tongue shifted so much while I was in Peru that when I return to the states, I stuttered and stammered for awhile in the aftermath of the abrupt transition from Romantic to Germanic, as English came less easily out of my face.

We need languages, all sorts of them, including those beyond words to express, create, connect, and decipher. They are the “ways in” to what we know, feel, experience, and desire.

I’m learning that art is one of those essential languages. It conveys what is wordless but real, formless but present. It opens dimensions and perspectives words cannot.

I suddenly became fascinated with art a few months ago when I was introduced to the idea of art as talisman (h/t Fabeku Fatunmise) - an object that holds and transmits power, meaning, and possibility. Inspired, I commissioned a piece and purchased another, and then I wondered: wait, could I do this?

The answer is yes. We can all do this.

So I did, and I am, and it is changing me and my world as much as Spanish did.

Just as there is power in our words, there is power in our art. There is power in expression and creation of all kinds.

So what wants to become fluent within you? Which languages want to be spoken through you? And what bridges between self and world will you construct next?