Notes from an Artist Who Teaches: On Cutting Things Up

I am not a collage artist.

At least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself.

Lately I’ve been making collages as part of a February challenge. I’m behind — I’ve completed one prompt so far — but that feels oddly appropriate. Collage, after all, is about fragments. Pieces gathered. Things out of sequence. Nothing perfectly aligned.

I first re-entered collage through my students. I invited local collage artist Natasha Cunningham to lead workshops with them. I wanted them to experience a medium that feels accessible, experimental, and immediate. Paper, scissors, glue. No intimidation. No blank canvas paralysis.

If I’m honest, I may have also done it for me.

There’s something freeing about working in a medium that isn’t your “main thing.” I’m trained in drawing and painting. I think in line, tone, composition. Collage interrupts that instinct. It asks different questions. It invites accident. It allows disruption.

And yet, collage often isn’t taken as seriously as other forms. It can be seen as craft. As hobby. As something you grow out of. That dismissal is interesting. Historically, collage has been radical — tearing images apart, reassembling reality, challenging what belongs together. It has been political. It has been intimate. It has been deeply conceptual.

But even without grand theory, collage does something psychologically important: it lowers the stakes. When you cut into a magazine page, you’re already working with something that existed before you. You’re rearranging meaning rather than generating it from scratch. For someone who teaches art full time, that shift matters. It feels like a warm-up for the creative mind.

The piece I completed during a recent workshop surprised me. It didn’t feel like a classroom demonstration. It felt personal. There’s something about physically cutting and placing that bypasses overthinking. It’s instinctive. It’s fast. It doesn’t ask for perfection.

This month’s challenge has only just begun for me. We have a small holiday here in Jamaica soon, and I’m hoping to sit with the prompts properly. Not to produce masterpieces. Just to play. To explore. To let fragments guide me.

Maybe collage is less about being a “collage artist” and more about being willing to rearrange what you think you know.

Sometimes the warm-up becomes the work.

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Unprompted
Untitled 2026 

Prompt: Toilet Paper
Title: Baby Lighten Up - 2026