In praise of cut and paste creativity
I recently attended a collage workshop run by Teresa Grimaldi. Like many, I am not naturally talented at art and so it can feel a little intimidating launching myself into a creative activity. In preparation, Teresa had laid out boxes of different materials from photographs, magazines, old books, coloured card, ribbon, found objects, even an AtoZ. She gently encouraged us to peruse the contents to see what caught our eye.
I found an old nicotine-coloured magazine, the Puffin Post and began to turn the pages. The Puffin Post was founded in 1967 as a magazine for children, it contained short stories, news of new books, funny features and regular contributions from readers. I started to read a short story by Joan Aiken called Crusader’s Toby, which you can read in full in The Gift Giving: Favourite Stories (Virago Modern Classics) The story is a lovely sad tale about a ghost dog, a beautiful beach and a long sunlit summer. When I read I tend to mark sentences and passages that seem to chime with me or offer insight, wisdom or a different perspective. I soon became fixated on a sentence:
“It was a happy summer. The long salty sunlit days stretched in a peaceful shining chain, one after another, each exactly like the ones before, and yet all as different as the shells on the beach: time seem to have slowed down.” Joan Aiken
And there I had it, my inspiration to begin. The description reminded me of the glimmering vast expanse of summer as a child. Where I would spend endless hours on the beach, swimming, diving in and out of the arcades, searching for hermit crabs, eating sandy sarnies and rescuing wasps from sugar traps behind the ice-cream kiosk on Shanklin pier. Sunlight seemed forever on my eyelashes and the salt from the sea stained and prickled my skin. It also bought to mind images of my restless son playing on the shoreline a mere hour after sunrise, lost in a salty, sunny world of discovery and wonder whilst a solitary swan glided by. Who would have thought a stained old magazine would unlock a door to such vivid golden memories.
I began tearing strips of blue and yellow paper, some shiny tape became a gold chain and before you could say “roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer” I had created a tiny world to illustrate the quote. Lost in the doing, free from the endless grabbing of your attention to buy, be shocked or feel hopeless about, this felt like a small but satisfying creative liberation.
Throughout the workshop, I was chatting with other amateur collagers. One person had produced a series of witty political collages expressing his rage against the party machine. One child, a Ukrainian refugee showed me their collage populated by cats and mothers. It turns out that they had to leave their beloved cats and dog behind with their grandma and every day they would have a zoom call with their pets. Within our group, pathos, humour and nostalgia all found a way to be cut, glued and crafted onto cardboard, illustrating that being creative is a valuable tool for expression, a way to bring to the fore emotions that crave shape, that need to exist in order to be observed, acknowledged and released.
Collage Crew with Teresa Grimald runs on Sundays 12pm-3pm throughout June. This is a free activity, just turn up, all materials supplied.
#InspiredinSandown #LetsCreate #CreativeYou #YourCreativeVoice
