On Saturday, 2018/ 2/ 24, we held a "Let's Play with Collages" workshop at the Saku City Children's Future Center. Thirty people participated, ranging from four-year-olds to fifth graders. For most of the children, this was their first time trying collage.
The workshop went as follows: First, we explained what collage is using the pop-up picture book "Pablo Picasso". Next, we introduced two works by Uehara Kiro, which were made of collages specially brought from the museum: "At the Bottom of the Sea I" from the Zebra series (made up of stripes) and "Big Catch" from the Kaleidoscope of Time series (a picture of Daikoku-sama riding a chameleon and looking down at the sea where sea bream swim), to expand the imagination. After that, we had them choose a window frame that we had prepared and started cutting out their favorite images from a large number of magazines and flyers.
First, the cut images are arranged on a large A3 mount. Then, the paper is pasted on, but the key point here is the balance with the window frame. At first, the children were confused in front of the huge stack of paper, but in the end, they placed the window frame on top and completed one piece of work, and each one was asked to present it. From the way the children talked about their work and from the work itself, it was clear that they were using their maximum sensitivity in the short limited time, and I was surprised at their flexibility. Some participants rejected the window frame, and it seems they also experienced the constraints of fitting their freely created collages into a frame.
This was also an extremely valuable opportunity to reconsider what an art workshop is.
We are truly grateful to Naoya Man for making this our first art workshop at Children's Future Museum possible.