Collage

Imagine you have a big, clean piece of paper. Now, look around. You find a shiny blue candy wrapper, a crunchy brown leaf from the park, and a big, friendly word you cut from a magazine. You take your glue stick and carefully stick each piece down, one by one. You are putting different things together to make a whole new picture, one that has never been seen before. It’s like a puzzle that you get to invent yourself. When you do this, you are meeting me. Hello there. I am Collage.

I am a very old idea, but I love making new friends. Long, long ago, way back in the 10th century, artists in a country called Japan would paste beautiful, colorful papers right next to the poems they wrote. It made their words look even more special. But I became a superstar much later, about 100 years ago, in a beautiful city called Paris. Two artist friends, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, thought art needed a new spark of fun. In the year 1912, they started doing something that surprised everyone. They glued bits of newspaper, pieces of patterned wallpaper, and other everyday things right onto their paintings. They wanted to show that art could be made from anything at all. They are the ones who gave me my name, Collage, which comes from the French word ‘coller,’ and that means ‘to glue.’ Another wonderful artist named Henri Matisse also loved me. When he was older, it was hard for him to stand up and paint, so he started cutting amazing shapes from colorful paper and arranging them into pictures. He called it ‘drawing with scissors.’.

Today, you can find me almost everywhere you look. I am in your art class at school when you make pictures with torn paper and fuzzy cotton balls. I am on the front of birthday cards, decorated with sparkly bits and pieces that tell a happy story. You can even find me on computers and tablets, where people mix parts of different photos to create a funny or magical new scene. I am all about creativity and seeing that an old ticket stub or a scrap of fabric is not just junk—it can be part of a brand new treasure. I show everyone that by putting different pieces together, they can create something unique and beautiful that tells their very own story. What will you create with me today?.