1:1 the Art of Collage

Collage is an older art form than you think!  Japanese artists were sticking paper onto silk as early as the 1100's and in Victorian England collage Valentines were all the rage.  Join me, Yvonne, in exploring historical collage and current collage.  We will try new techniques and discuss what constitutes a collage in today's art world.  

The beautiful thing about 1:1 classes is we get to customize the experience to what your learner is interested in.  These are a guideline to what we will learn.  Your learner will work with me to decide what we spend more time on and how we will explore these techniques! 

Week 1: Historical exploration of Japanese and early European collages and we get to start out with Chigiri-e.  We use the materials of construction paper, magazines and tiny torn pieces to create landscape art influence by Chigiri-e principles. 
Week 2: Victorian Collage says much about it's time, changing society and how Victorian women reflected that in their artwork.  This weeks class is a bit Art History heavy and the assignment is to look at our place in our world and put ourselves in our collage. 
Week 3:  Let's look at Modernist, Surrealist, DaDaist collages.  We will explore their techniques. 
Week 4: Literary collage.  Let's try our hand at word and poetry collage. 
Week 5: 3D collage, what does this even mean?  Go for a walk and gather found objects.
Week 6: Photo collage and exploring where collage shows up today in the art world.  For this last week you will need a photo editor capable of cutting out parts of your photos (bring your own) to layer on a workspace such as Gimp (free opensource) or Photoshop.  I know there are others, just let me know which one you will use so I can familiarize myself with it to provide support. 

This class will also be learner led.  If we decide to take longer on one section or another I will allow that organic expansion and contraction (maybe something will not be as interesting to the students and somethings will be more so). 

As a Metis artist myself and having completed numerous Art History courses at McGill University, I will also be presenting Indigenous artists who use collage where their style fits into our research and exploration.  In particular, I will present George Littlechild and Jane Ash Poitras as contemporary First Nations Canadian artists.  I believe it's important to include many perspectives and artistic expressions.  
 
And Beyond!  Go for a walk and take photos of places where posters have been put up and torn away revealing layers and take some pictures.  

Create a story and illustrate it using collage!  I will share my one completed book that I use this technique in.  

You will need glue sticks, white glue, or modge podge; paints of some sort (hopefully non-toxic) and brushes; found objects from a walk; magazines, newspapers, flyers, construction paper; scissors; maaaybee a hammer, nail, or wire, string or something to work on the 3D collage; a computer that you can use photo editing software on and permission from your adult to install the software if you don't already have it.  Please discuss this with your adult. I use Gimp and it is open source and functions just like Photoshop.

We will work together in class and talk about what we are working on. I will present information and show examples as well as provide a brief pdf handout before every class.  


We are ESL Friendly, CEFR Level B and C.

*This course directly relates to B.C. Ministry of Education’s Curricular Core Competencies for Arts Education Grades 4-12 exploring/creating, reasoning/reflecting, communicating/documenting, and connecting/expanding.