Collage: Street Team Challenge

Michelle Ward's street team logo

Michelle Ward  at GPP Street Team runs a monthly challenge for creatives. I don’t want to limit it to art journalers or artists, because the contest is always open to interpretation. The contest is always interesting, just enough challenge to make it irresistible and enough left to the imagination to make it intriguing.

This month’s challenge was to rip lines of text from a magazine and create a collage. The alternative was to create a collage background.

I wanted to create a word collage, something I haven’t done in a while and love doing. The background needed to be related, but not distracting. While cleaning out some files, I noticed that a lot of envelopes are printed with security patterns–small patterns in green, gray or blue that keeps prying eyes from seeing what’s in the envelope. I loved that these patterns had such variety. I tore them in strips and pasted them down with Golden’s gel.

The background uses security envelopes to create color and pattern.

The magazine I used was a New York Times magazine from several months ago. The table of contents used interesting numbers written in an elaborate calligraphic hand. Seeing only the numbers of different sizes, I saw ages instead of pages. Using the numbers, I searched the magazine for thoughts or events that might happen during a lifetime and pasted them next to the age appropriate for that thought.  Below the image are some of the words that may be too small to read.

Inner Beauty/Outer Space © Quinn McDonald, 2010 All rights reserved.

The words create a path through a life. Holding the idea that inner beauty is important doesn’t mean that the rest of the world want to agree to that idea every moment. We live in judgment–our own, others,–all the time. The idea of a life lived without fear and sadness exists only in the vacuum of outer space.

Title: Inner Beauty/ Outer Space (The Lives They Lived)

17. . . Simple Truth: It’s important not to be gifted.

22 . . .She wrote songs about being crazy in love.

28 . . . Women who want to want.

32. . And independent woman, she married but that wasn’t enough

36. . . They lived apart isolated by circumstances and by choice.

38. . .Seeing inside, she got beneath the surface of people–and things

42. . .The price of success is less than you think.

49. . . She taught others how to listen to the unspeakable.

52. . .The police can be so literal. They should read more Kafka.

–-Quinn McDonald is a raw-art journaler. Her book, Raw Art Journaling, Making Meaning, Making Art will be published by North Light Books in June, 2011.