The universe really does conspire to help one achieve what one’s heart desires. I’ve been waiting for short courses on arts for a long time and I’m so happy I found out about the Art of Collage Classes that artist Toots Magsino has been teaching for a long time. Her class was mentioned in one of the blogs that I follow so I searched for her information online and contacted her immediately. I was not able to join the first cycle she offered earlier this year but I am now currently taking the second cycle which started the last Saturday of May. As of this writing, I have just finished Exercise 6. Tomorrow, we do image transfers.
This is the only class that I have ever taken most seriously in my whole life. I definitely expected to have fun and I did but I didn’t expect it to be self-examining, contemplative, and even therapeutic. Normally, I am bad at conversations and I rarely share my thoughts, but in her class, oddly, I am not afraid to talk. I share just bits and pieces but still, they’re more than I share with anyone else. Most of the time though, as is usually the case, I prefer to just listen to the funny conversations.
During the first class, she asked us to do a spontaneous collage, to just tear off pages from the magazines we brought and put images we liked together.
Ah, yaiks. I pulled and tore and ripped and pulled and tore and ripped. I then arranged the images in the least jumbled way I possibly could, which isn’t really saying much.
One of my concerns was how I will be able to fill all that surface. It was my first time to work on a canvas that huge — a 1/8 size illustration board. Huge! That’s coming from someone who is used to working on dominoes, jenga blocks, and bottle caps.
I came up with something that didn’t really make sense to me at first and didn’t like all that much.
When I found out that we had to share our thoughts about our work, ahh, more yaiks.
I felt self-conscious when I did because I really didn’t know what to make of it. But when Toots looked at it, it was like I presented her with some sort of a window to myself. I thought she was amazingly perceptive. And that made me feel all the more self-conscious. While she went on and on about my work, I was like, huh-how-could-she-possibly-know-that-about-me-we’ve-only-just-met. Her feedbacks on my style and personality, both of which I am slowly just discovering, felt so spot on.
So here it is, my piece which I call “Finding Yourself” which is how it felt like when Toots critiqued it.
“FINDING YOURSELF” Collage on a 1/8 size illustration board
The Creative Chaos of Margaux 