Collage Cheese

This is the only collage I ever made as a budding teen artist, and it was made completely under duress. Stemming, perhaps, from the fact that I am far too right-brained for my own good, I always considered collages to be the useless stepchild of the art family, lacking in originality, purpose, or artistic merit.

It's bad enough that making a collage entails taking the detritus of human existence and gluing or stapling it to construction paper with a few strands of wasted macaroni that would be better served up with some Velveeta Cheese. What's worse is that every time a school teacher assigns a collage, there's always some deep psychological mindset instilled upon the students to make it seem more important than it really is. In the case of the above example, the assignment was "make a collage that expresses who you really are".

Most teenagers are incapable of expressing that idea in written or spoken words, so how could they possibly do it with a cutout of a Chanel perfume ad featuring a cowboy, and a low-boobied African tribeswoman from a 1983 edition of National Geographic? The process is only saved by the hilarously painful process at the end where students have to describe their collages to the class. Inevitably, every student says something literal, akin to "this up here is an apple, and I put it in because I like fruit".

I now open the floor up to the future armchair psychiatrists of America. Feel free to analyze me, my thoughts, my wants, and my needs based on this collage!