Half an hour

The notion of collage was quite simply, for me, unappealing. Perhaps I’d failed to be inspired by anything I’d seen. But as destiny would have it, Dimitris my teacher at the Ergastiri Zografikis in Athens, through a series of talks and patient exploration, introduced me to the possibilities of collage, a world that stretched across ages, techniques, and movements like the thought-provoking Dada.

From torn fragments of paper to the mingling of diverse textures, Dimitris ignited a spark enthusiasm for collage within me. He revealed how each piece could breathe new life into the old, forging connections between seemingly unrelated elements.

And then, I turned to a poem that held the power to resonate with my own life experiences. Constantine P. Cavafy’s “half an hour” unveiled a narrative of longing, a fleeting connection that was almost real, a bitter-sweet yearning for something just out of reach. This poem became a mirror, reflecting my struggles at that time.

Through a series of collages that breathed life into Cavafy’s words, each piece carried the essence of his lines, each layer a reflection of my own journey. As I cut, arranged, and rearranged, I was somehow reclaiming the narrative of my then present, expressing my emotions through this tangible art form. It was a powerful act of catharsis, a metamorphosis of pain into beauty, of captivity into liberation.

In the end, what was once an unappealing concept blossomed into a means of quite profound expression. The seemingly fragmented pieces merged into a mosaic that encapsulated my personal growth, resilience, and the courage to transmute pain into art.

I have to be honest, collage still isn’t my favourite activity but I learned a way to enjoy it. During a group expressive arts session we were all asked to write down our feelings about something in particular. We were given time to think about what we were writing and asked to write it fairly bold. Then came the fun, the release, the reward, to scribble out all those words and then rip up them up to fashion something else.