I attended a nice workshop today taught by Anne Lewis called “Crash Course In Composition” at the Gage school in Seattle. We started out cutting out black construction paper circles, we were armed with scissors, x-acto knives and glue. We felt like we were in kindergarten again, it was freeing and pleasant.
We did a bunch of compositions with the circles, then she changed the rules and had us use the scraps left over from cutting out the circles.
I picked mine all up and then dropped them into a pile and then I saw it. I adjusted the pieces here and there, and even better, I could see the wind howling and screaming, ripping leaves and bark off trees. I saw Tropical Storm Sandy, I saw Nor’easters, I saw Katrina, I saw my husband’s heroic fight against cancer. In a few moments I had made a provoking composition out of tiny scraps of paper. I liked it instantly because it helped me express my turbulent feelings about how powerless we humans really are.