It’s been a busy week and there is lots I could report, but what I most want to discuss is the collage workshop I ran on Thursday. As I mentioned last week, I wasn’t sure if it was going to take place until two sets of brothers signed up together making it a Go. As it happened, those same four boys didn’t show and I was left with another teenage boy and a nine year old girl, both of whom blew my mind. Since I had set up supplies for six, the gallery owner and I made collages too. Along with the colored tissue paper, glue sticks and crayons I’d provided, I also had a stack of old New Yorker and Vanity Fair magazines as well as a folder of xeroxes of bird photos. After I showed the kids the samples I had prepared as examples and explained my process, they both launched into their projects. I watched the boy obliterate the xeroxes he’d selected by covering them with slices of magazine and wadded up tissue that extended off the cardboard he adhered his work to. He went through a few glue sticks and wound up with something both feral and very sophisticated.The nine year old girl got the brief right away and impressed me with her calm focus as she cut up birds to create a fantastic, fantasy creature - I could not believe it was her first collage. Then, in a moment of genius, she folded and unfolded several sheets of tissue to give her bird an enormous crest that also extended off the cardboard by at least a foot. The work was inspired and inspiring, so much so I did the untitled pelican at the top of this post during the workshop, and then did the vulture below at home two days later.