Back in November I was dealing with a complete breakdown of my relationship with my mother. I was trying to understand where I was and how I saw my mother...both now and as a child. AC suggested that I do some collage work around it.
I had actually been planning to nearly two years before this and had collected a box full of images that appealed to me at that time. I think that I was still into too many words about she said, did etc. But in November I just felt but didn't have the words necessary to convey that in writing. Art Collage was a great way for me to see my internal world.
Today I was reading a post that Erika refereed to in her post about Facing Our Personal Walls: 10 Cool Links. In her first link she talks about Cathy Malchiodi, who started a new on-line organization called the International Art Therapy Organization. I was reading her article in Psychology Today called Cool Art Therapy Intervention #10: Magazine Photo Collage.
She talks about using images to convey your thoughts. It is a kind of play therapy because you can manipulate the pictures till they are where you want them before gluing them down. When I did mine at first I just picked three images that spoke deeply to me and glued them down.
I found a new blog this week Jafabit's Art Embroidery.
She has used her sketchbook that she took to Washington, D.C. and used one of the pages to make an embridery art out of it. Here is the first post that shows her journal entry that she has started with.
How have you found symbols or used symbols in your art? May be you know someone who inspires you with their use of symbols, I hope that you will include a link.
Page 14 of my Miro inspired Journal.
He confessed later that hungry hallucinations were his muse. “Compared to the use of ether, cocaine, alcohol, morphine, or sex, Miró’s hunger-hallucinations look almost like a monkish fasting.” (p.44 in Joan Miró. By Janic Mink. Benedikt Taschen Verlag. 1993)