The Secret To Creative Play

I've contributed to the Mini Mystery Art Machine three times already. The first time I wanted to do small collages. I’d taken a class a few years ago, and faffed around a bit with some supplies I bought at the art store, but doing collages for this project felt out of my league. So I painted what I called “quirky blob birds”, something I’d been playing with at the time. I was having a ball creating these characters (they had such personality!), but as I delivered them on the due date I was worried they were too silly, and that someone would put four quarters into the machine, get one of these birds, and be disappointed that it wasn’t real art.

I stopped making them soon after.

I had lost the fun of creating because I was worried about the product.

Keep in mind that the entire time the machine’s founder kept reminding me that art is in the eye of the beholder, and these were just a dollar, and it was all for fun, and the birds were adorable. The pressure was all my own.

Months later I contributed black out poetry for the machine, and then a few months ago I wrote some haikus. Both are things I love doing and are things I’m confident doing - I am a writer, after all - but the experience felt less like fun and more like work.

When the opportunity came up to do the machine again, I immediately knew I had to play with the collages.

I’ve been doing small 4” x 4” mini collages almost daily since January, with no goal other than to do it if I felt like it and not do it if I didn’t feel like it. I did collage #59 yesterday. (You can read more about the project here.)

To make these mini-mini collages, I started with a square a little smaller than 2" x 2", and eventually went to 1.5" x 1.5" because I wanted to make sure they’d be able to fit into the capsules without bending or folding. That’s a small canvas to create on, folks.

But these aren't necessarily collages I would create on a bigger scale anyway, even for my daily project. The postage stamps, along with all of the other shapes, are made using paper punches. My hands can’t possibly cut shapes that intricate with scissors, and my eyes and neck wouldn't bear the strain of such intensely exacting work.

The papers for the 1.5” mini-mini collages all come from scraps of collage papers or artwork I painted and used for other projects. In other words, they’re original artwork, made from original artwork.

The 2” collages are made with the same scraps but I also played a lot with brightly colored craft papers. I absolutely love the contrast and boldness.

If fact, I love everything about every one of these, even the ones that I look at and want to tweak a bit. I enjoyed making them, I enjoy looking at them, and I see in them the energy I felt while I cut and glued and played.

The process of creating is a journey. We might know where we want to go, but not feel like we have the tools or navigation skills to get there. We might feel unworthy of even considering the adventure. I’m not a trained artist. I know nothing about design or artists or art history. (Several people have mentioned that some of the collages remind them of Matisse; I had to have a friend explain that analogy to me.) I had what I thought were the “right” supplies but I felt like a fraud for using them. The use of paper punches and Elmer's glue felt like cheating somehow; real artists use real supplies from real art stores, right?

I’ve stopped caring. I’ve stopped asking myself what a real artist is, or even asking “is this art?” Instead, I focus on whatever muse shows up to play, with whatever materials are on the table.

The glue, the paper, the punches - those have been sitting in a box in my house for two years. I’ve had everything I need - except the mindset that I had nothing to lose by playing. That insight isn’t the new path; it’s just the light illuminating the path so I can take the steps forward.

Cut, rip, glue.
Repeat.
Move on with your day.

That’s the secret to creative play.

You can see all of the collages on my Facebook or Instagram pages, or in the Notes section of this website.

all the links