Up: [[Visual Arts]] Created: 2023-10-19 Updated: 2025-06-16 I was inspired to write this note after reading '13 Ways of Looking', a blog post about [[Jess Collins, Collage Artist]] by [Jenny Odell](https://pioneerworks.org/broadcast/13-ways-jenny-odell) that Austin Kleon referenced in a Substack post. Looking back at that single sentence, three breadcrumbs, three separate people, connected to take me to the thoughts I’m sharing here. Odell subtitles her article “On collage and the practice of searching, finding, and filing.” I haven’t collaged in a long time. I’ve been affected, I think, by people’s offhandedly dismissive comments about collage, such as art teacher Connie Solera’s description of it as “gluing shit down.” Collage, to some, is the thing you do when you can’t think of anything else to do, or as a warmup for ‘real’ work. But I don’t believe that. And I do absolutely love interesting, narrative collage, because it is about searching, finding and filing. And, more important, because it is about connection, something I’ve finally identified as key to [[What Makes Me Come Alive]], and a central focus of my love of learning. I want to be a multidisciplinary artist, writer and educator, which is how Odell describes herself. It makes perfect sense that collage would be part of my process. > [!Orbit] William S. Burroughs > Collage is the art of arranging unrelated objects. The more unrelated the objects, the more interesting their connection. ### Update [[2025-06-16]] In the almost two years since writing the above, I’ve made dozens of collages. Lately, I’ve been especially enjoying making what I’m calling “collage cards” — 5x7 cards using scraps from my large collection of images. I’ve made 54 in the last three months. Here are a couple. ![[CC 2025-03-01.webp]]