#mightyugly2015 Meeting 4: Collage time!

We had the fourth meeting of our Make 2015 Mighty Ugly book club this week. C.R. had to stay home with an adorable but fussy baby, so we had 5 members in attendance. We shared the backstories for some of our ugly creatures, which ranged from optimistic tales of becoming a can can dancer after the zombie apocalypse to stories that clearly were drawn from some of our fears about ourselves. Some of us (myself included) felt very freed by making an ugly thing, because there was just no worrying about how it turned out. Others felt rather uncomfortable with it, because they like pretty things.

My collage. The theme seems to be inspiring ladies. Includes: Tina Fey, Alyson Hannigan, Katniss Everdeen, Dana Scully, Buffy Summers, Rainbow Brite, Kim Possible, Ariel, and some more abstract elements. The text at the top says "Unicorns are totally real."

We dug into collage-making pretty much right away, and tried to address some of Kim's suggested discussion questions as we did so. We had all made SOMETHING as a kid, and discussed limits imposed on us by adults (like when an elementary school art teacher made me paint on paper that had been taped on the underside of a table, so I could know what it felt like to be Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel), and times things went wrong. As I've been thinking about this the past few days I've recalled more and more of my childhood experiences with making where I was just so happy to be making a thing that I didn't care how it turned out. It often turned out badly, and regardless of how other adults responded, I'm lucky that usually my parents were very supportive.

None of us struggled with any discomfort trying to make something pretty with other people around. I really think the fact that the collages were individualized made me much less self-conscious about it. In the end, my collage was more pop-arty than art-arty, and that was fine, even in the face of art-arty collages like J.C.H.'s:

This is in contrast to a painting that sits on a shelf in my home office which was done at one of those Wine & Design sessions. The painting turned out just fine, but because I was in a room full of people making exactly the same thing as me, I kept comparing mine to theirs and finding it wanting.

Compared to the other painters in the room, I had the distinct feeling that I was painting with the fine motor skills of a toddler.

A couple of us confessed that we wouldn't make collages if not assigned to do so (myself included), because it wasn't that joyful an experience. It wasn't unfun, exactly, but we could think of ways to make that were more our kind of thing.

Sonja's collage is sassy.

Overall, this was a fun evening that didn't get too heavy, which I think was a needed break after the first few rather intense sessions.