Collage Prompts
or scrap therapy!
Welcome to ꜱᴄʀᴀᴘ ᴛʜᴇʀᴀᴘʏ, also known as controlled-demolition-with-a-glue-stick, or simply cut-first-understand-later,1 which is the closest I’ve come all summer to an actual method. The residency started in June with one rule: show up. Now it’s August, past the momentum and before the panic. Abstract collage2 was one of the threads I set for myself, on the theory that an empty brief was generous. It isn’t. It’s just empty.
Here’s the structure I was missing: five prompts, shuffled like a deck, so the only decision left is which card to pull. Pick one, ignore the voice in your head that says plan first, and just go.
The Understudy
Find a famous painting and print it out. Cut out the main subject and collage something wrong into that space.3 The more unexpected the replacement, the better. Feel free to keep building on the image with additional collage elements.
The Room With Too Much in It
Draw a simple square room. Then keep adding objects long after it feels reasonable: extra chairs, stray shoes, stacks of books, another lamp, another plant, a hat on the floor. Let the room become overstuffed and claustrophobic, as though too much life has happened inside it.
