Leavage (glue not required)

Here’s a creative exercise for artists with indecisive, short attention spans:

Make a collage of images without glueing them down on the page; The way we share on social media is such that, no one knows if it’s glued or not, and you can have endless hours (or minutes!) of fun, and continually revisit, and rearrange your found image elements.

These images are taken from the Namba Parks free shopping brochure in Osaka. I had left them in my journal to glue later, but upon finding them jumbled on a blank page of my journal and forgetting how they were originally arranged, I could make a different visual hierarchy. Juxtaposing the hand holding the pen next to the woman’s left side creates some kind of hybrid form in which the shadow of the hand is her right shoulder. You see it too, don’t you? No?

Just my imagination then. And yes, this is all for the better. You create tiny moments in which the search for meaning is as playful as coming up with a picture of jigsaw pieces from different puzzles. It’s all about making connections in ways you didn’t imagine when first cutting the pieces out. There is no set solution. Knowing that going in frees you from finishing. But where does it take you? What feelings does it create in your mind? A story? A poem? Did these questions even exist before the cutting began?

Most importantly, did you get there by spending money, or simply time to be involved in a creative process?

I wager it’s one of the fastest ways of getting out of your head and not tied down to anything permanent. But by all means, glue them down if you want to. Me? I’m happy enough to share this creative exercise with you.