Collage That!

Using the arts to tell a story

Ages: 12+

Homework: Optional, but all students will have to collect images on their own to support the story they desire to collage.

Collage, the joining of related or unrelated images to each other, is an imaginative graphic medium, perhaps most especially for students who have the impulse to create, but don't enjoy drawing– either for lack of confidence, or their frustration at not being able to render accurately. This class looks at what images mean, and how meaning changes as pictures are combined with others. How do images communicate ideas?

The materials are analog: paper, scissors, removable tape, and glue. The images can be magazine or newspaper clips, snapshots or other photographs, or illustrations. The students must develop their own collection of clips with which to play and work.

What I teach is image selection, composition, and scale, as well as

cutting, taping, and gluing techniques. I do not teach the digital manipulation of images on the computer; however, prints made

by downloading imagery from the Internet can be used if it

is the only reserve of images available.

Stuart Frolick earned a B.A. degree in Philosophy at Ithaca College where he had his first experience teaching as a T.A. He taught philosophy at the Community School of Herricks High School and taught Illustration at ArtCenter College of Design, where he was vice president–creative director. At California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Frolick was director–editorial services (2005-2020.)
Throughout his career Frolick has also maintained a studio art practice in photography, collage, and gestural drawing. His visual work has appeared in Idea magazine, American Illustration, and Black & White and Color magazine. His written profiles of other creative professionals were published in Graphis and Black & White magazine for which he is a contributing editor. Frolick is the father of three children, all of whom created sketchbooks and photographs with him when they were young.