Chapter 1 | FREE PLAY
In a collage, you stick cut-out or torn fragments from different images/sources on a background. By combining fragments that do NOT originally belong together, something strange, dreamy, emotional, funny or even provocative can arise.
Anything can be used: drawings, notes, newspaper clippings, packaging, tickets, magazines, cardboard, textiles, and so on.
Exercise 1: Create a composition from about three image fragments. These can be fragments of objects, but also pieces of text, a pattern, or a color field. Use an (imaginary) frame so you can practice plane division (in this case, the balance between empty and filled space). It’s helpful to move the fragments around a bit before gluing them down. Surprising combinations often arise by chance, while you actually had something else in mind.
Tip: Use sturdy paper as a base and separate paper for applying the glue, for example with a Pritt (glue) stick. Always close the glue stick tightly after use (you should hear a click).
In a collage, you can play with proportions: you make something big seem very small and vice versa.
Exercise 2: Make a collage of two figures (people, animals, buildings, objects). One of the two has either shrunk very much or grown very much!
The next collage, ‘Fruity Figure with a Wink’, is an example of how you can build a single figure/creature from elements that originally didn’t belong together at all. This way, the meaning of something can also change: an apple has become a head here, and a fried egg an eye. How something can transform into something else, often by chance, is one of the fun specialties of collages
Exercise 3: Try to create a fantasy figure (animal, human, robot, alien, etc.) by merging fragments from different images/sources.
Visual transformations sometimes occur by chance. For example, in the damaged, peeling bottom of a door (picture) I saw a sort of alien skyline on the horizon. In the next chapter you will see how spreadsheet paper is transformed into skyscrapers.
