Torn Paper Collages

Black and White Torn Paper Collage Making

These K-2 grade students began their first art lesson with me today in collage. We explored how paper can be changed by tearing, using our hands like tools. We used black paper on a white ground because this allowed us to better see ways we could arrange the shapes we had torn. We discovered we could overlap and combine our shapes to make new configurations as well as use the ground itself as an element, utilizing its positional relations such as the middle, its corners or sides to compose designs. Some of us made pictures and used the top and bottom of the white paper as a formal device to express space. We used very drippy glue with a stick that we shared as a pair and we worked hard to control the appropriate amounts when we glued. Some of us are still fascinated with gravity and used the glue as a way to explore what could be the appropriate amount. Some of us discovered it is much better to put the glue on the black torn shape rather than the white ground. One first grader said " I can see the glue better on the black paper. The glue is hard to find when I put it on the white paper".

During work time I usually circulate to keep tabs on their unfolding understandings and as an opportunity to speak with them while they work. These conversations can be quite intimate. I find it is better to ask questions as if I don't know since assumptions can actually put me outside of their process. In this particular instance speaking directly to those students who were learning English as a second language and using their art making as our mutual meeting place between looking and talking turned this kind of contact into a naturally shared expressive experience. I found mostly there was less holding back because of the language being unfamiliar and more of an urge forward to communicate the art experience. Our exchanges got off to a good start, framed by the aims of the lesson, these students felt much more able to show what they had done and demonstrated that they had taken in enough associative thought to begin an observational inquiry.