By Public Service Associate Juliana
Over the weekend, Saturday May 10, 2025, I honored World Collage Day by spending time at the table with various papers, scissors and a glue stick. Creativebug, the app available for free with your library card, recently released a new series of videos called “Collage Homage: 15 Women Artists to Know,” and I’ve been working through the tutorials with great joy.
Each episode features an introduction to a woman artist and their particular collage style and follows with a tutorial to imitate that style. I have found the videos both engaging and inspiring and have stretched my artistic boundaries in directions I would not have gone in otherwise.
When it comes to art making, I am a person who works well with prompts. I like just enough good orderly direction to get me started. A prompt gives my brain a place to go, to find a focus, to take that first step with some sense of where I’m going. Often the hardest part with creative endeavors is getting started. I like to use Creativebug to help me begin, to set myself up for the desired goal of entering a flow state, where I’m just in it, absorbed enough to lose track of time.
No matter how many collages I make I turn to Creativebug again and again to help get my mind situated into art mode, to get settled in with intention. Log in with your library card and see what Creativebug might help you create. For even more inspiration, see the list of books below. Happy crafting 🙂
Contemporary Collage Inspiration
- Collage: Contemporary Artists Hunt and Gather, Cut and Paste, Mash Up and Transform by Danielle Krysa |A showcase of cutting-edge contemporary art from across the globe features galleries of collage by 30 practitioners, from the surreal landscapes of Beth Hoeckel to Fabien Souche’s humorous appropriations of pop culture. Each artist has also created a new piece especially for this book — all using the same original image, but with results as wildly diverse as the medium of collage itself.
- Vitamin C+: Collage in Contemporary Art | Organized in an A-Z sequence by artist, the book features both well-known collagists including Njideka Akunyili Crosby; Ellen Gallagher; Peter Kennard; Linder, Christian Marclay; Wangechi Mutu; Deborah Roberts; Martha Rosler; and Mickalene Thomas, and a plethora of lesser-known names deserving of greater attention. Vitamin C+ showcases 108 living artists who employ collage as a central part of their visual-art practice, as selected by 69 leading experts, including museum directors, curators, critics, and collectors.
Prompts & Techniques
- Collage Your Life: Techniques, Prompts, and Inspiration for Creative Self-Expression and Visual Storytelling by Melanie Mowinski |Requiring minimal equipment–just scissors, glue, paper, and pens–collage is an accessible craft that offers limitless creative possibilities. Like meditation or journaling, making collages can be an avenue for self-reflection and artistic exploration.
- If You Can Cut You Can Collage: From Paper Scraps to Works of Art by Hollie Chastain | If You Can Cut, You Can Collage is specially designed for people who feel like they can’t make art. Want to know a secret? You can! You just need a little inspiration, instruction, and confidence.
