I have re-organised my collage box into a smaller, neater box. This meant I had to rip larger things on half, which was fun. Sometimes I find a piece of a painting or stained paper or a magazine cut out in there and it starts to feel special as I think about ways I can use it. Sometimes ripping things apart indiscriminately can help to remind me that nothing is special, or rather, every piece of scrap stored is malleable. It's potential place in a composition is irrelevant until it is stuck down (although then it can still be removed, and the completed collage itself is only a moment in time - it won't last forever). Anyway, I sought to make these collages in a feverish and unprecious way as a representation of those creeping thoughts. An embrace and dismissal of them, because these things are individually significant regardless of their altered state or place inside a collage.
It's funny, I feel that I always have to remind myself to do things that way. Like I lapse back into a sentimentality about every little collageable thing. I have to remind myself that tearing and splicing and sticking and obscuring don't do anything to alter the meaningfulness of something. The pieces don't stop being what they were just because they're changed or moved. This has a parallel with how we often feel about ourselves. We have this idea of the broken. People who have been permanently changed as the result of some event in their experience. Whilst it's true that we are all shaped by our experiences, this rigid definition of who a person is, this clinging to who a person was at a particular time, is odd. It's almost nonsensical at times, the way we defines ourselves as these static personalities when really we are moving, morphing histories. Our bodies change, our thoughts change, and our lives change. We are transient, ever-changing, and adaptive - like bodies of water.
This is beautiful, your images, your words...just everything, I love that notion of collage which makes me think of meaningful intricate layers opposed to the binary of 'innocent'/'not innocent' which I think is gross and damaging. Your bee is also very important to me because bees are such hopeful earnest creatures, the perfect representation of childhood mark making!
ReplyDeleteBees are so cute and great! I wanna hug bees, but I cannot hug bees. Shame.
DeleteThese are amazing -- I also liked seeing the torn disco balls after you wrote about tearing things up. :p
ReplyDeleteI really liked what you said about impermanence/malleability in people. It's definitely an interesting concept, because we really do look at people as more rigid than they are.
Yeah! I feel like acknowledging my growth is like THE most important for my mental health. It's so easy to get stuck thinking "I should've done this and that by now" or to beat yourself for your mistakes. Mistakes hurt but they are an integral part of who we are and they allow us to grow and learn and change, so they're worthwhile. It's harder to dislike yourself if you can think of yourself as a shifting landscape.
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