The incredibly powerful reflective tool that is collaging
Unnamed collage by Samuel Wilkes
I couldn’t tell you exactly when it began for me, not which day exactly.
But as an avid Pinterest user and advocate—despite the almost seemingly ever increasing amount of ads they choose to share— I one day discovered they had released a collaging tool.
A very powerful tool.
Pinterest serves many purposes, for me specifically, it was where I would draw a lot of visual inspiration for various ideas. And I think as a very common use, for creating moodboards or vision boards—a certainly powerful visualization and manifestation tool.
That day, it started very simple, I mostly just hodgepoged together images very similarly to a moodboard, connecting pictures against their seems, and not much else.
But over time, I started to experiment more, and really embrace collaging as a form—which I feel like doesn’t have any rules, but lends itself to create something new from recycling something else. In the physical and literal sense of cutting and pasting together or onto a piece of paper, it’s like alchemy.
Transmuting something into something else, in very simple terms.
The more I think about this, the more fascinated I am by the idea.
What’s more is that I realize it’s not too different from tarot cards in the way of being a psychological tool: a tool that can be used to reflect something deeper in the subconscious, out into the concious and reality (my loose definition).
Over time, I began to collage more and more.
It certainly was and is an escape for me, something you can focus on and vary in intensity of focus.
But as I began to experiment more with new shapes, layouts, I started to realize how truly powerful the medium can be.
To me it really is like a visual digital journal, but something that “writes” itself out in a different way, expressing itself in a way that writing on paper can’t, but to me, itches that same satisfaction of writing with myself each day.
Eventually, I set out the intention to do it every day, as a sort of ritual for myself, and because of the process itself being very meditative, so if I didn’t feel up for meditating that day, it also made me still feel accomplished in that area.
I gave myself this daily challenge, as well as to really embrace it as a practice of intuition. So I also set the parameter of going as fast as I possibly could in selecting each image or cutout on Pinterest based on how good they felt. And I seriously think that it has dramatically improved my ability to be discerning with my own intuition.
By forcing myself over and over, in essentially second-to-second intervals, I was training myself to get good at picking what feels good—another important factor in manifestation and alchemy.
When I first started out collaging, it was during the very beginning of living in my car in New Orleans, and the daily ritual of showing up to create and engage with my own psyche in this unique way was essential to making it out of that situation relatively unscathed.
Especially these earlier collages, you can really see the reflection of thoughts and ideas coming through the rapid selection of images. When I was making these and looking at them after, I never really thought much of what they looked like. But it is extremely obvious to me now, the obvious connection to what was going within me on a deeper or more psychological level. It truly was a tool for transmutation, to get the feelings out of me and somewhere else—it made for some damn good art too.
It also increased my capacity for “finding” things in a general sense, much like training the ear to listen for something specific in music, I slowly started developing my own eye and appeal for specific imagery. And I swear by proxy of this, I was finding more interesting things too, especially in day-to-day life. The more I collage and keep it as a practice, the more inspired I am by all of the small things around me. It even inspired me to start taking photos of all of the cool things I found in New Orleans shamelessly, and a few of my pieces I actually use some of my real life photos in the collage!
Collage I made during the middle period of living in my car
