Why I do it? It brings my inner and outer world together. My inner world out into the open. Helps me to know myself. Helps me to know things I didn’t know about myself. I do like collage. It used to be a way to get to the bottom of an emotion; or understand a down I was experiencing. Sometimes I would start a collage and the tears would come. It was giving myself the gift of time to be with myself. It became a way of taking care of myself. Recognizing myself.
I’d gather a bunch of magazines or if didn’t have any; even newspapers would do. Whatever I had around. Sometimes a collage came out of one magazine. I also needed scissors; although I have tore the picture or word that called to me. Usually I cut; took half the time available to cut out pictures and words and half the time to paste them on a large piece of paper.
Sometimes I’d reserve the front of the paper for what I knew about myself and the back for what was in the future It surprised me; the words that I would pick.
Sometimes I divided the collage into sections; past, present and future. Another time I did one that was full of words or phrases in one corner to signify things everyone knew about me; another quadrant was about things only a special few would know about me; the next only things I knew about myself and the last quadrant was full of words, phrases or pictures that I would venture to say, was my unconscious speaking out.
When I’d finish a collage; as in pasting on all the pictures, I’d date it; as I’m in the habit of keeping things. These would be like my journals or my inner writings. Then I write what I am seeing on the collage and it usually comes out like a story.
A big thing for me would be sharing the collage; like having a friend or partner who was interested in seeing what I had placed on the page. They would hold and I would read. Lots of times this is when the emotion will pour out or I get in touch with the emotion that had been held in my body as body pain.
Collages were and are a big part of my healing process. They helped me move on; move through and gave me hope for better tomorrows. I did hundreds in the last 20 years.
Feb 8, 2012
ellensagh 