Perfect Discoveries: Collage Art Allowing the Subconscious To Come Through

Revealing something of myself to myself... and sharing it with you

I recently shared with you a collage “found art” booklet that I created called Flying in Discoveries. As I was going through the photos of my work, I saw that I also have this one, Perfect Discoveries.

I didn’t create these intentionally to be paired. That is kind of the magic of the collage process for me. I go through these layers and layers of a process … I read a magazine, then I go through and clip out images and a few words that capture my attention. Then I put those into my big box of magazine cutouts. Then later I dig into that box and start adding layers to booklets to create collages. This process can take days or weeks.

I don’t typically have any theme or plan. It’s a meditation, a flow experience, a time to play and just let what emerge do so. I know a piece is “done” intuitively. And then I set it aside. And later, when I come back to it, I often find that there were themes after all, but I just didn’t know it at the time. Often, those themes reveal something new to me about myself and my thoughts and my work. Call it the subconscious at work perhaps.

This one is just four pages (greeting card style).

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These booklets are about the combination of image and words, color and texture, but I thought I’d pull out just the words from both of them to look at:

Collage Art Book: Flying in Discoveries

Flying in Discoveries

Uncommon comfort

Stars adorn the sky with flowers in her hair;

gold and gems sat atop her head.

And tears of gentle longing thou wilt weep.

Her own familiar image tugged at her heart,

Completely undeniable.

Fragile: Handle with Care.

Absolutely essential, the light of hope.

Perfect Discoveries

Sometimes rethinking spaces as she went, to make the result feel deeply personal

Drawing on global influences and infusing each room with artisanal pieces,

she worked to create a welcoming, vibrant home

filled with her favorite things.

“It has been really nice to have a period of time where I could just make something that was, for sure, my own,”

she says of her iterative approach.

Light your life

A rare opportunity to live in the heart

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Today, I am looking at these two pieces together and asking, what can they tell me? What might I be trying to tell myself. Mostly that I want to be open to discovery, internal and external.

One way that I explore meaning is to take all of the lines from both poems, merge them, and put them in alphabetical order. If you are curious, here’s what that looks like:

A rare opportunity to live in the heart.

Absolutely essential, the light of hope.

And tears of gentle longing thou wilt weep.

Completely undeniable.

Drawing on global influences and infusing each room with artisanal pieces,

Filled with her favorite things.

Fragile: Handle with Care.

Gold and gems sat atop her head.

Her own familiar image tugged at her heart,

It has been really nice to have a period of time where I could just make something that was, for sure, my own,

Light your life,

She says of her iterative process.

She worked to create a welcoming, vibrant home.

Sometimes rethinking spaces as she went, to make the result feel deeply personal.

Stars adorn the sky with flowers in her hair.

Uncommon comfort.

What I read into this is how much it matters to me to do the creative work that I feel meant to do and to have a flexible schedule to do it and to create a space where I live and work that really works for me. And I realize that my current space is good in many ways but that there are a few tweaks I might want to make. I’m always “rethinking spaces as she went.” It’s a reminder to be to be gentle with myself int he process of creativity and discovery.

My favorite line is: Her own familiar image tugged at her heart,

Thoughts?

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