Snippets of Sanity

In March of 2020 I was about to round the racetrack after my first full year in business. My shop was a passion project, with 50 percent of the floor dedicated to art and craft classes and work shops and the other half dedicated to art supplies, artisan made goods and ‘objects of inspiration’. We had done pretty well for a first year and our group of teachers and students were thriving.

But the rent was going up and we were focusing on the next big thing. Then we had to shut down. The state did. The world did. And it was clear after the first two weeks that we weren’t going to be opening up any time soon.

Being so new and so small we didn’t qualify for the pandemic bailout money, so I knew I needed to break my lease and close the storefront for good. I just couldn’t go into debt for rent that would inevitably, eventually, come due.I was sad, confused and a little lost. Where would I find my new community if zoom classes are the new normal?

One on the teachers reached out to me.

‘Let’s start a collage group. I have a list of 6 people who are interested. I’m going to send out 6 envelopes of ephemera and papers from my stash. We will all take turns doing this. So every week everyone gets an envelope and once every 6 weeks you mail one out to the group. We can all make card size collages and post them on Instagram. If you’re busy just set a timer and do it in 20 minutes. We’ll call it Collage in 20. We can hashtag it.”

So in just a few days I received my first envelope. Calligraphic address. Pile of scraps, just floating on my desk. Magazine cut outs, vintage handwriting, bits of texture and pattern and color. It was a puzzle, a cypher, a project. And someone was waiting to see what I made.

There weren’t rules to speak of. You could use some or all of the pieces and you could add you own. The whole point was to have some fun.

So I snipped and I glued and I tried to make sense in a world that had stopped making sense. I put together pieces that were falling apart. And, so did we all.

We found the big picture in the bits. We worked out our fears, our frustrations, our isolation, our nostalgia. And we shared. Others saw what we were doing and more groups formed. Clipping and gluing and sending out messages in tiny scraps of paper.

It filled much more than 20 minutes for me most of the time. Members of my group started sending the post cards and using them for other things. They were sent to get out the vote. To reach out to the lonely. To seek social justice. To Save The Post Office.

We found our reasons and every week there was a gift in the mail.Another pile of pieces, curated by a friend. Some sent colors, some humor, some beauty. Another reason to make something new and share it, with each other, with the world.

To see some of the collages check out #collagein20 #collagein2020 #collagein2021

Feel free to create your own collage circle. It creates a world of good.