In working in the collage workshop on Monday, I had no real plan regarding what I wanted to do. I began by finding scenes that looked like they went together, namely winter scenes from the Christmas magazines. I began to entertain the idea of simply creating an amalgam of winter scenes that looked like they belonged together but were slightly different. Over time, things began taking a turn for the absurd and I became more comfortable with creating more bizarre images that reminded me of Max Ernst. The first was a large kitten’s face I put in to make it look like the giant baby cat was peaking around the tree a man was about to cut down. Eventually I used the rest of the cat in conjunction with a picture of a stuffed bear and cupcake to make a new creature altogether.
Over the course of this exercise I became more comfortable with combining apparently discordant images to try and create new images. I used it to create something rather silly, but the experimentation helped open my mind to the possibility of more deliberate and meaningful combinations.
I also found that I became more comfortable with the mediums as I began to work with it more and more over the course of the classes. And exploring the materials in our own ways also definitely allowed us to get a better idea of what we want to do for our future projects.