COLLAGE AND DEEPENING CREATIVITY

My friend Shelley Klammer emailed to tell me about the free online collage workshop, Deepening Creativity, which she offers on her website, Expressive Art. I have enjoyed several collage courses with Shelley and really benefited from this process but since I'm so busy right now I didn't think I had a moment in my day to spare ..... but a quick peep would do no harm, so I nipped over to the website, just to see what it was all about. Suffice it to say I have since found the time and am now well and truly hooked. The course entails the creating of a daily collage in 10 minutes, using 2 or 3 magazine images and a phrase or word that catches your attention. It is quick, spontaneous and totally addictive.

The object of the exercise is that it helps you to aquaint yourself with subconscious thought patterns or issues that may be blocking your way forward, whether it is creatively or in your day to day life. I'm finding it so relaxing and it's a great way to loosen up for carving. I won't say much more here because you can read all about it at Expressive Art.

I will, however, share my personal process and revelations with you, regarding a spontaneous collage that I completed this morning.

It is necessary to set aside my judging mind while flipping through magazines until an image "steps out". I gravitate towards anything African and arty but I'm trying to be open to a wider spectrum of choice, both positive or negative. The first image I choose is of an african woman dressed in shweshwe cloth. I love shweshwe! On the same page I find the mask. No surprises here..I'm obviously going to choose this image. A few pages further I read a phrase that amuses me. "Water the flowers... or something". My judging mind immediately breaks into chatter. The phrase is not going to fit this collage... it doesn't make sense etc. I ignore the chatter and the next moment the face and hand image loom out at me. Quick, cut it out, shuffle,shuffle ... glue them down in the notebook.

Now to look at the collage and see if it's telling me something. I take a break, make coffee and come back to look again.

Let me give you a quick peek into a white woman's experience in the new South Africa. I, like many other South Africans, am trying to be open to a different way of doing things. A different way of thinking. A different way of seeing. We try to slip into African time which is a way of doing things in one's own time whenever that might be. It's a far more laid back way of life and yet it has some of us pulling our hair out. We are also learning about the different cultures and customs that have always existed albeit in the shadow of the old South Africa, and we really do try to embrace them. Sometimes it's easy but more often than not we flinch. One such custom that comes to mind is the ritual slaughtering of cattle on feast days right there in the back garden on the otherside of the hedge. This is a custom that is totally natural and acceptable to the African way of life, but we white people feel faint at the thought of it (see the white face in the collage brushing the cold sweat off her brow).... and fly to the telephone trying to alert Animal Welfare , the police, the minister at the church down the road or anyone who might listen. Our customs are clashing with one another and the fact is if we all want to live in harmony we have to be more accepting of our differences.

This leads me back to the collage. The sweet face of the African woman in her pretty shweshwe outfit represents the side of Africa that we are willing to embrace. The primitive mask stands for the old customs of Africa that some of us are battling to accept. The point that comes across in this collage is that if we are going to continue living in South Africa we have to get over our sensabilities...and that's where the phrase "Water the flowers....or something" comes in. (Just get over yourself, get on with living, go water your flowers or something.)

"It is the still, small voice that the soul heeds, not the deafening blasts of doom." - William Dean Howells

I found this quote at Sun Pours Down Like Honey. With a name like that you just know this blog will be pure poetry. Susan is a poet and her words are like honey.