Watch out, she’s a poet with a Canva account
I first became obsessed with collages in college.
Late nights. Good friends. Some plant medicine and playlists full of calming music. Scissors, glue sticks, and a giant stack of National Geographics.
That was my version of partying in school.
Now, I make collages on Canva without the mess of paper and glue.
Is something lost in the transition from analog to digital collage? Eh, probably. My hand muscles have probably weakened without the practice of meticulously cutting out magazines with tiny scissors. But I now have a near-infinite supply of pictures with royalty free image collections like Unsplash and Pexel, so it feels like a fair trade.
I love collage because it feels like writing poems. Anything goes, and there can be an unexpected resonance between two separate images or ideas that creates an entirely new meaning. I could say a lot more poetic, analytical things about why I love collage, but I’d rather just share some that I’ve created. After all, that’s why the writer in me loves when I let the artist in me have a few hours of flow time—because I can still tell a story without words, because there are so many languages and not all of them are verbal. Color, shape, light, texture, patterns, all coming together into one quilt, one little digital square at a time.
