and you think you're weird

I'm taking a class called Collage & Assemblage (pronounced so that the two words rhyme). I'm sure this class will produce six weeks of funny stories, mostly because of this elderly women, Giovanni. When I first entered the room, she was walking by doing something or other and I assumed she was the professor. She looked the part. Then a few minutes later, a tall man with a cardboard box comes waltzing in and says he'll be right back. Ok, so that's the professor. Then Giovanni walks to the front of the class and counts our heads. "10," she says, "We're missing two. I'm a student just like you, but I know there are supposed to be 12," she explains in a thick Italian accent. Um, ok. Then she produces a folded piece of plastic sheeting (probably to paint on top of), which I think she literally just found sitting on a table in the studio. She brings the 4-foot-long wad to the center table/big box of wood made for models and still life's to stand upon, lays it down, and lays down on top of it. Just so randomly, in front of all of us. A few minutes later she gets up and returns it.

Lots of other weird stuff from her throughout the professor's introduction to the class. He wants us to research a whole list of collage artists throughout the semester. Giovanni asks, "Do you need a computer to do this?" and suggests maybe she could use the newspaper or magazines to find these artists. Professor explains that it would be so much easier to use the computer. "Yeah, but, it is not like computers have color or anything," she says. What she thinks is that computer screens are monochrome. Someone tells her where she can use a computer at school and she says she's been there before to check her e-mail, but she never noticed that it had color. She's surprised. We're so confused.



This is the first collage I made in class. I suppose I have to explain. We were given a pizza menu and told to cut out all of the text and graphics with a razor. Then we were given random clippings and photocopies and told to add them however we want. The final step was to do something on top with a pen. It looks a bit different in person, but my scanner couldn't pick up on all of the elements (including some of the white spots that are actually empty) and I'm not going to do anything about that now.

Not all of our collages will be 2D. Most are 3D. More on them later.