I think that all the workshops we’ve had for class have been rewarding and increased my understanding of the texts we’ve read, but the collage workshop on Monday may have been the most enjoyable. I wasn’t excited about making a collage initially. I didn’t feel like dealing with scissors or messy glue sticks, and had no idea/plan for what I wanted to make. But once we got going, I found myself embracing the mess and being much more creative than I anticipated.
The wonderfully cheesy poetry magazines that the library supplied were actually perfect for collage, with lots of animals and people in different scenarios. Thinking back to Ernst, I started to combine the people and animals, and see how seamless I could make it look. My final product was pretty weird, but I had a lot of fun making it, and laughed the whole time as I was cutting the heads off of men in a fishing boat and replacing them with the heads of cats.
I was much more creative in the collage workshop than in the digital workshop, and I think a big reason for that was because for the collage workshop we literally had something to work with. It was daunting to sit in front of a computer where you can create whatever you want and just come up with something. The materials of the collage inspired me and gave me direction. Maybe Ernst chose to do collage instead of drawing because the materials allowed him to be more creative.
I felt the same way about the two workshops. I was definitely more creative and productive during the collage workshop because I was more comfortable and more inspired by working with materials that were already created and that I could choose from. I’m much less comfortable working with new digital media software, so the second workshop day was much more experimental for me and resulted in a piece I was less excited about.