Collage

     I had not looked forward to the 75s item, suggested by Mariposa and Ni Aódagain, that I make a collage of 75 pieces. It was a good idea, but I don't particularly like making collages. My son suggested I concentrate on words, since words are closer to my heart than images, so I started tearing relevant words from magazines but without much enthusiasm. I just wasn't yet inspired.

      The first inspiration came at Christmas, when my son gave me a round piece of masonite, already gessoed, that I knew immediately would be the surface for the collage. The second impetus was when my eye fell on my decades-long post card collection. I loved those post cards. I have often gone through them just for the pleasure of it. I have used them as writing prompts in creative writing classes, and my old house, I made three large screens of sewn-together post cards. Some of them still have ragged stitches. Why couldn't I now cut them up for images in a collage?

      Suddenly I loved the idea of making a collage of 75 pieces.

   Dividing the collection into categories – animals, people, mountains, lakes, ocean, architecture, places, and so on – gave me a chance to look closely at each beloved post card again. Here were many cards Maren, my dear friend who died three or four years ago, had sent me from her travels. Here were mountain pictures from my backpacking partner Phil. Here were post cards from friends who have died, from friends who have passed out of my life, from my son, my sister, former boy friends, friends from the past, acquaintances writing to say, "We had a good time with you," and beloved friends who live far from me. Here were pictures of places I had been and places I would probably never see. Here were tributes to me and thank-you cards and love notes. For hours ghosts from the past fluttered around me, kissing me on the cheek, patting my head as I worked.

      After categorizing the post cards, I picked from each category the cards I knew I would want in the collage – those whose images I have always loved, those depicting places special to me in my life, those with pictures that seemed representative of me. Those cards totaled about 65, which was just about right. The other ten or so would come as I worked.

      I found that I had to cut the post cards into very small pieces to get 75 in one collage. For the center I used a painting of a woman reclining with a book, cut round. I arranged the pictures by categories around her; then I rearranged them by color. Then, carefully, I glued them on. The whole project took three days.

     This may not be a stunning art piece, but I love it. It is a collage of 75 years of my life. There is a backpacker on the board and a skier and swimmers in the ocean. There are art and food and music. There are flowers, birds, trees, animals of all kinds. There are place I have lived – Vanderbilt University, Cambridge, Sweden; places I have visited – Greece, France, Denmark; and places I love – Crater Lake National Park, Ashland, the Oregon coast. There are lakes and rivers and mountains. There are pictures with memories of friends deeply embedded. 

      There are also, of course, words: "Friends," "Théatre de l'Opéra," "Zornsamlingarna" ("Collections of the Swedish painter Anders Zorn," whose house I visited with Maren), and, across the picture of the reclining woman in the center of the collage, a quote by Rumi that was on one of my post cards: "Let the beauty we love be what we do." Indeed. That's what the whole collage is about.

With thanks to Mariposa and Ni Aódagain for setting me on this journey.