Pictures Who Write Themselves (The 1-2-3)

I've been flirting with Cristine Mason Miller's book Desire to Inspire for several months now. She (and all the book contributors) have some great exercises and thoughts to help you move through your own creative process. Based on one of these exercises, I made some big collages to bring out some of my aversions and passions.

Aversions

This is how I did it:

1) Cut stuff up (I so enjoy this part!)
2) Make a pile of images you are drawn to
3) Make a pile of images that give you the willies or make you want to throw up.
3) Layer it up (I used 20x30 Foam board)
4) Glue it down
5) Put it where you can see it everyday
6) Write a phrase that comes up for you for each image (Don't put a lot of thought into this, just write it down)
7) Contemplate what the words reveal

 
For steps six and seven You might consider what led you to layer one image over another or why you chose to give each image its place in your collage. On step seven my phrases become poetry. I didn't struggle with or plan that, the darn things wrote themselves.

Here are a few passions I was able to put to work with the collages:

• Moving humans from a place of purposelessness to purposefulness 
• Using what already exists in nature (trees, rocks, sun, growth, seasons) to connect humans to gifts
• Connecting us to our gifts gives us space to move to a place of connection and purpose
• Bridging a connection to nature with human-enabled technology

Gifts

Stay tuned for the poems I created with these collages.

What comes up for you when you look at these images? What comes up when you take words out of your writing?