Why I Collage | Part 2

There's something cathartic about stripping images down to their simplest forms and then building them back up again.

As I mentioned in my previous post, for me, collage is about making connections.

Usually, that means the connections between two disparate scraps of paper. But more often than not, it's about making deeper connections.

To thoughts or ideas. Or feelings.  

In fact, when I see hundreds of paper fragments spread out on a table out on a table I think, "That's exactly what my brain looks like. A fucking mess with tons a bits of things floating around just waiting to be utilized."

There've been plenty of articles written about creativity and making connections, and even cult leader Steve Jobs once said, "Creativity is just connecting things."

And I believe that to be true.

It is also magic in the way that it can connect the past with the present. 

It's impossible not to feel connected to a bygone era when you spend hours poring over 70-year-old news magazines. Collage is all about recycling, reinterpreting, and reprocessing our collective past, present, and future. 

There's also something cathartic about stripping images down to their simplest forms and then building them back up again.

Collage is a place to put my anxieties and fears, to exercise control over the world itself, and to brush back the overwhelming digital crush of apps and push notifications and social media rants and constant news and updates and marketing messages and images upon images upon images. 

With collage, I'm in control.