MixedMedia

Had a really fun time working with high school students in the art program at Cabot School in Vermont. Two classes, about 1.5hrs each – had to whip through my introduction on collage so they could get the work.  The first group was a sophomores with whom I’d already worked. Their task today was to apply one of their wood block prints to a new collage. The second group was older, new to my approach, and a little less into art overall.

It was interesting to see the two groups work. Here are some observations:

• The second group seemed more awkward with each other – uncertain. This spilled over a little into group conversation. It felt stilted at times when some didn’t want to talk much about their work.
• The first group worked much more “loosely” than the first. This is to say, they mixed there colors, did away with hard boundaries and representational drawings, images, etc.
• The second group was asked to pick an insight from their class journals to work their collage around. They liked being asked to draw on a) something they’d already done and b) their own work, ideas.
•  Both groups liked working with lots of resources around them. Being able to grab things that caught the eye and find ways to work it in. Much less formal.
• Even though both groups seemed pretty happy with their works (though a couple seemed ready to chuck across the nearest river to see how far they’d fly) neither wanted to discuss them much. Young people seem to enjoy creating over talk.

It was fun having a quick intro and Q&A about technique. I’d brought in the pomegranate piece to demonstrate how I like to achieve a painterly quality with collage and several of the students (girls) seemed to like the references to mythology and feminine archetypes.  A high point for me personally was hearing how students in the first class had hung their tiles up at home in their rooms. They seemed to really value their work, which was nice to experience. We also talked a little bit about decollage and how I’d recently encountered the work of Swoon.

The tile shown here I made while working with both groups to demonstrate different simple techniques as we went along. The theme was inspired by one student who was having a hard time “coming up with” something to collage about. I invited him to try and not think about it too hard. Start with a color you like for the background,” I’d suggested. “Work it: get as much tecxture as you can out of it by scraping, scratching, pushing it.” That got him going. He ended up with a very clean and simple piece: a paper element on a gently textured purple background. Anyway, the demo tile is available for swap at peacetiles.net