Cross Reference

Two of my blogs are intersecting more and more. So here's what I wrote in Rockbridge Times this early Sunday morning. It seems to have a lot to do with Second Seating:

A friend hosted a women's dinner last evening. She called it a surprise party and asked us to bring a stack of magazines that we wouldn't mind cutting up. There were nine of us around Kem's big square dinning room table and the talk was fast and furious and funny. I am forever reminded of how many articulate, savvy, smart, creative and outrageous women I count as friends. They enrich my life and I could do without them. All of them.


The magazines were piled among wine glasses, hummus and crackers, cheese, fruit and then salad fixings followed by bite size cookies, sorbet and ice cream. It was almost an hour before we took scissors to glossy magazines to begin our assignment: gather images that speak to us and arrange them in a collage. And don't think too much about it.

First, there were eruptions of anxiety. No one's right brain would kick in. Kellye was intimidated, she said, sitting next to me because she says she's a totally left brain sort of person. All not true. Collage brings out the hidden and unknown. It can be a bit like dreaming if you don't 'think' while you're tearing and pasting.

I remember taking a week of classes at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY and our first assignment was to make ten collages in an hour. It was a wonderful way to begin the class. We ripped apart magazines and created very loose collages - a few of which I've kept all these years just to remind me that faster is often better - few windows of time in which to 'think' about what you are doing.
The nine of us continued with wild digressions and asides until Kem set An hour later, we'd produced remarkable collages, all of which I wish I'd photographed for you to see. Perhaps I'll email a request to all and ask that they send an image that I can post.

I came home and immediately began removed two scraps of paper from my collage and judged it better for it. Then began to think of the images that I will put on the assortment of plates and platters I've been assembling for Second Seating's Wall of Plates. Ever onward. Also woke up this morning with a thought about the Oak Farms Dairy school milk cartons. I am going to call an HISD art teacher friend and see if she can gather some random art work from her elementary school students that can be incorporated into the milk carton chandelier. The whole piece can be a sort of mobile with cartons balanced by drawings of the children who drink the milk. Perhaps they can draw milk cartons?
Oh, the power of that moment as we awaken. It's the mother lode for ideas.