Creative expression

 

Collage is a supremely simple process. Paper, scissors, glue - one color, object, or shape invites the next. Its expression arises from whatever material happens to be at hand, and because we cannot know which picture will adopt which other, or where the constellation of imagery will finally settle, it circumvents the influence of our own limited preconceptions. As the great paste-up artist Jess once noted, we wait “for the piece itself to tell [us] where it belongs.”

As each juxtaposition suggests another, we begin riding a wave of spontaneous association. Multiple meanings and interrelationships arise, in collaboration with the makers of the original component images, and so consensus reality gets rearranged and refreshed. Harmony emerges from the chaos of random elements, simply by following the dictates of the moment, the pleasure of the eye in free-flowing attention.