Personal Identity Collage
This unit explores personal identity expressed in collage compositions.
Students collected images that represented their lives and created a collage in their research notebooks. Students were encouraged to use old personal documents, photographs. They also added their own layers of writing and printing.
Students did several provisional compositions in their process journals. The student whose work is on the left, used stencils in her design. The composition above used block printed shapes over the top of her composition.
Decorative papers, maps, and images from magazines were also used.
The student to the right took her own picture by pressing her face against a copy machine. She is making a collage from these images.
The student above was a figure skater until she received serious injury. She altered images of herself skating by painting over the images and creating a background of images she muted with a layer of printmaking ink.
I have taught this unit for many years and there are many iterations of the same core idea behind the unit. The approach to the collage changed, depending on the group of students working on their version of it.
Using images of themselves was the approach in these examples, but other students felt that just using images that represent them was a good strategy.
I have taught this unit in my art classes for many years and there are many iterations of the same idea: a collage epressing a unique individual. Students chose the mediums they wanted to use with the papers they chose, The composition below/right, is done on a computer. The work to the left, uses different kinds of textures and patterns assembled by hand.
All of these collages use mixed media, from stenciling, block printing, and photography on paper. The parameters of the assignment needs to be designed by the teacher, but I have included an instruction sheet for one kind of approach. (below)
These collages depend on decorative papers and exotic images, but the underlying problem within this unit is composition. How can the student integrate the diverse materials he uses into a singularity, a “whole.”
