I have recently been taking part in a collage workshop held by our current artist in residence, Shareen Sorour. So far, we have covered some of the history of collage – looking at a presentation of a myriad of a variety of collage artists. I came across many inspiring names such as Herbert Bayer, Dora Maar, and Lee Krasner. It was in this class I learned of Hannah Höch who I included in my previous contextual blog post. I am excited to be part of this workshop as I am using collage in my current project, and I feel attending this class will help improve my understanding of the technique.

Our first piece was to be a self portrait, and although I felt I was lacking in some resources, I am proud of my outcome. I was inspired by my broken mirror, showing a distorted version of myself. I had also found a headline of an article in my newspaper which wrote ‘BLOODLINES’, which I thought perfectly fitted the theme. I combined little subjects which speak to my personal life, such as the rainbow and cat, covered by a broken mirror which I have stitched together using silver marker. I also used the red lines to literally represent the work bloodlines.

Next was a second piece developed from the first. I went for similar imagery, now being more literal with my use of portraiture. I wanted to continue with the ‘dream like’ imagery as it related to my own issues with insomnia, using stars, silver and blue. I am excited to continue attending the workshop and to see the results of the next class.