The workshop on monday was an eye opening experience to say the least. I learned several things from my experience attempting to create a collage (it honestly was my first time ever). The first thing that stood out to me was how meticulous one needed to be when cutting if they wanted create a clean image. I had difficulty cutting out the shapes of human figures as well as cutting out trees in particular. I ended up giving up on the trees as they were almost impossible to cut out accurately around their border. Given the extreme difficulty I had with producing clean cut shapes, I cannot even fathom how Ernst was able to create his collage-book in three weeks. I just do not see how it is possible.
The next thing I noticed, was how this process was inherently improvised. While one may have an idea of an image or scene they wish to depict, the process is improvised because it requires searching through material that is not one’s own, and piecing it together. There is something about tearing apart images and piecing them together in a new way that is very fulfilling and spur of the moment. One simply flips through the pages until something they are looking for appears and then it can be removed from the original source. The fact that the author does not know the exact end image at the beginning of the project makes the art form very interesting and fun to carry out.
