Happy New Year!
To broadening community, forging new habits and building skills in 2025.
Hello, Collagers!
It’s been a while, but I hope you are all well and are looking forward to more collage possibilities in 2025!
For myself, the Holiday season was a whirlwind of family activities, Holiday shows, and furious attempts to fulfill painting commitments. All the while, though, this little collage circle has been on my mind and I’ve been thinking about what I can offer to help us all continue our growth as collage artists.
Previously, I posted about some community opportunities in the world of collage.
Collage Communities
I plan to continue sharing opportunities and communities that pop up throughout the year in an ongoing “Communities” section of Collage O. While I may not have something to share with every post, I hope that by the end of the year, we’ll have a nice collection of organizations, opportunities, and resources for our collective reference.
To start, I’d like to highlight a fantastic collage material resource in Portland, Oregon, that I visited for the first time at the end of December.
SCRAP Creative Reuse - Portland
SCRAP Creative Reuse was founded in Portland OR in 1998 by a group of teachers who wanted to find a home for their leftover classroom materials. They brought these materials to A Teacher’s Space, a resource center for Portland Public School teachers, and left them on a table for others to use. In 1999, an innovative teacher named Joan Grimm got together with a handful of her peers and received a grant from the Department of Environmental Quality to open a small creative reuse center for the community.
In the 2015 fiscal year, SCRAP PDX diverted over 140 tons of usable, creative material from the waste stream. SCRAP PDX is the flagship of the SCRAP Creative Reuse Network that includes SCRAP Creative Reuse centers in Richmond, VA, Ann Arbor, MI and Baltimore, MD.
SCRAP became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in 1999. SCRAP Creative Reuse is a network of grassroots creative reuse centers around the country. From that first creative reuse center in Portland, we developed a model that could be shared in other communities in other places.
As you can see above, I enjoyed navigating what became a fun treasure hunt for materials and supplies - all for an unbelievably inexpensive price tag. I especially enjoyed the stacks of old photographs and collected a few to add to my collage bins, including this photo of “Myrtle and Elaine”, 1956. I especially love the glamorous string of beads accenting the woman’s bathing suit.
With this collage, I also enjoyed adding a beautiful little section of cyanotype by Portland artist Maren Salomon, which I purchased at one of the emerging local artisan markets popping up at the Llyod Center—Mall Ratz PDX. (I hope she forgives me for chopping it up to add a little love to this vintage photo!) She makes amazing, detailed botanical/nature-themed illustrations, too. I just purchased a beautiful one on BuyOlympia.com to decorate my future studio space and to show my appreciation for her art.
Collage Community Challenge
Secondly, in regard to community, I want to mention a collage challenge opportunity inspired by post-Christmas detritus: The Christmas Collage Challenge from Contemporary Collage Magazine.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS 🎄🎄🎄 here is a small reminder to save your wrapping paper and cards for our Christmas Collage Challenge!
The Challenge:
To use the wrapping paper and packaging from your Christmas presents to create a unique piece of collage art.
HOWEVER…there’s one small twist…
The final collage must NOT be a Christmas themed collage.
To submit your collage, take a good quality, evenly lit picture of your work and send it to us at:
submissions@contemporarycollagemagazine.com
The deadline for submissions is January 25th 2025.
Merry Christmas and Happy Collaging!
Hopefully, like me, you’re still putting away that Holiday swag and can save a few papers and such to transform for this challenge!
New Collage Habits & Skill Building
As you probably noticed from my lack of posts, my re-entry into the post-holiday world and onward into 2025 has been rather slow. I’m struggling to identify exactly what I want my coming year to encapsulate (artistically speaking). Instead of forcing a plan onto my life just so that I can say I started these (blah, blah, blah) habits on the first day of the year with all kinds of intention and discipline to keep them going all year long, I’m easing myself into the new year. However, I DO hope to get my “Collage Friday” routine going again. It didn’t happen last week, and it is barely happening today. (I am cleaning off my collage table and organizing bins of materials to hopefully get myself motivated for next week.) If 2025 is off to a slow start for you, have no fear. You are not alone!
While my artistic goals for the year are not fully formed, I have a few skills on my bucket list that I would like to try or improve to further enhance my collage efforts—one of which is pen-and-ink drawing. To start, I’m working to replace my morning coffee and phone-scrolling habit (I find the easiest way to fit in new habits is to replace unwanted habits) with a new habit of morning coffee and pen-and-ink mark-making.
Pen and Ink Drawing
For materials, I’ve prepared an old journal for a collage-style mark-making journey to use with my Radiograph pen collection.
I created thicker pages in this used notepaper journal from 2018 by gluing pages together with PVA glue.
I added random decorative collage papers to the pages for little pops of color.
I painted over sections with gesso to reduce the noise of heavily texted areas and to better integrate the collaged paper.
I’m working with the book Pen & Ink Drawing, a Simple Guide by Alphonso Dunn to slow down and be more deliberate with my marks (as evidenced by the small practice squares of marks at the top of this journal photo).
Dunn also offers a range of learning opportunities in other formats, including online courses and YouTube tutorials. You can find out more at Alphonsodunn.com.
I’ll share more about the skills I’m exploring in the coming weeks.
Most years, I jump right into the new year with lists of expectations, but I’m trying to take this year a bit slower with fewer expectations. Nothing is wrong with my previous New Year enthusiasm - for me, this year just feels like it needs a little more room and space to process my life and work intentions.
Collage Prompt
Along with my Collage Fridays, I hope to offer a simple weekly collage prompt - one that doesn’t encompass the entirety of a collage but is a simple step in the process to help move a collage forward if it’s stuck or we feel like we’re in a rut.
Prompt 2025 #1 - Simple Collaged Embellishments
Instead of working on a particular collage, use your supplies to create small collage embellishments. These can be simple (circles or leaf shapes) or more complicated (eyes, butterflies, silhouettes). Start a collection of these items to add to future collage projects.
And voila! Just like that, we’re off to another year of collaging together!
Happy New Year,
Jennifer
p.s. Look for a summary of these sections to appear in the footer of this and future posts.
Community Collage
2025 Skills Challenge
Collage Prompts
Prompt 2025 #1 - Simple Collaged Embellishments