MAKE A COLLAGE: Create from Within

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IMAGE: Eugene James Martin, Untitled, 1995, mixed media on board, Gift of Suzanne Fredericq in Memory of Eugene Martin, LSUMOA 2008.10.23

MAKE A COLLAGE: Create from Within

LSU Museum of Art's exhibition Eugene Martin: The Creative Act shows artist Eugene Martin's vibrant and unique abstract artworks. The pieces in this exhibition are abstract mixed-media collages. Abstract art is art that doesn't represent the things we see in our our everyday world. It has color, lines, and shapes but they don't look like objects, animals, or people we see daily. They are often created based on feelings, ideas, and pure imagination. Mixed-media is when an artist uses many different tools to create an artwork (crayons, paint, markers, cutout paper, and more!). Collage is an art form where you take pieces of paper and combine them to make a new piece of art.

Eugene Martin's art works have many different forms, shapes, figures, and other features that he would freely create from within as he worked in the studio. Martin would also make works and then cut them up to be placed on new works to create new collages. Visit the exhibition at LSU MOA, and look at the colors, forms, and ways Eugene Martin freely expressed himself. Be inspired! Make a collage from materials around your home and challenge yourself to create from within like the artist Eugene Martin. Dive into the creative act yourself and see what you make!

Steps:

  1. After looking at Eugene Martin's works, which work really spoke to you? How did it make you feel? Express that or other ideas you have in your own artwork. Maybe you want the work to be a rectangle or maybe a circle. Eugene Martin would sometimes use a circle format to challenge his creativity.

  2. Choose colored construction paper or black and white paper. Eugene Martin did both colorful and black and white compositions in his series of works.

  3. Draw random lines and shapes based on what you want to express, maybe you want to do an abstract figure or free flowing shapes. Next color with crayons or your choice of media.

  4. Once finished, cut up this creation into random shapes and sizes

  5. Next start a new composition, get a new piece of paper and leave it blank or maybe add a new background based on what you are imagining.

  6. Place these cutouts and any additional elements such as magazine clippings with glue onto this new base paper to add more layers to create your final piece of art

Supplies:

  • construction paper or paper of your choice to be base

  • glue

  • scissors

  • magazine clippings to add textural elements or other found papers of different shapes and sizes