Day 5 of Creative Camp

Day 5 of taking myself to Creative Camp.

I’m a creative director trying to get out of my head and back into my hands.

So this summer I’m embarking on 30 irresistible creative adventures. And you’re invited to join me.

Today’s randomly generated prompt is:

Collect.
Found.
Fast.

And this is my first time getting the "Fast" twist, which means I have 15 minutes or less to complete the prompt.

No time to overthink. No time to hem and haw. No time to stop and start over a zillion times. Just go!

The prompt is clear: collect found objects quickly.

This calls for collage!

Collage is buried deep in my heart where the Dawson’s Creek theme song plays on an endless loop because that’s what I listened to when I spent my tweenage years collaging every square inch of my bedroom — including the ceiling — with Jane magazine and the stuff my mom’s hairstylist let me take home on the sly.

So yes, we know this terrain. But there's no time to go on a grand found-object journey.

Rule #1: Use what you have.

First stop: the mailbox, the perfect found-object grab bag on a time budget.

Junk mail.
An old to-do list.
Scraps of art headed to recycling.
Old magazines.
Travel brochures.
Little bits of paper possibility.

The collecting is my favorite part.

Fast makes me trust what I have already noticed + saved + gathered.

This prompt has become a mirror, helping me see that:

Collecting is part of I process the world.

I collect art supplies. Books. Vintage ads. Magazines. Rainbows. Tiny beautiful things. Weird scraps of possibility.

Collecting is a form of creativity!

And it makes my home and workspace a LIVING collage. 🥹

Back to my prompt!

I'm on the clock, 15 minutes to go, delicately cutting out collage items, and immediately realize...WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!

LET ‘ER RIP.

Fast gets me out of my head and back into my hands.

I love how ripping these scraps to shreds reinforces their trash to treasure transformation

I'm not focused on forcing a revelation or a dramatic breakthrough. I'm just moving pieces around. Following instinct. Letting it be chaotic. Letting it be fun. A little messy. A little loud. A little unreasonably enthusiastic.

BITCHES.
BE.
RIPPIN'.

The finished collage feels like a day-in-the-life time capsule.

Junk mail.
Moments from my calendar.
Magazine scraps.

Tiny evidence of what was floating around my house and brain on this exact day. In a year, these To Do items will feel so foreign. My eyes will greet them differently.

Today’s stress will soon be rose colored by the modge podge of time.

It’s why I love collage and mixed media art. They turn ordinary life into a living artifact.

A day, a place, a culture, ripped up and rearranged.

What stopped me.
What made my eyes twinkle.
What I almost threw away.

And isn’t that kind of how memory works?

Scraps of moments, images, words, feelings: little pieces we collect without realizing. Then later, somehow, they arrange themselves into a story.

Collecting and collaging are ways we make sense of the world. Gathering the little pieces of life until they start talking to each other.

So here’s Day 5: a 15-minute time capsule made from Rule #1: Use what you have. A reminder that sometimes the fastest way back into flow… is to stop trying to make something important… and just start ripping and rearranging what is already yours.

Welcome to camp.