Broken hearts—and lives—abound in our world. Abuse that breaks them runs rampant. But things made to fly still can, once they regain their strength, once their lives revive. A butterfly just emerged from cocoon is exhausted and weak. It takes time for it to gather its inner resources and venture, little by little, to the end of a branch, and eventually into the air.
These decorative winged creatures now look, to me, like they’re gaining joy from one another’s presence. No longer smushed down into sodden lumps of near-death, struggling just to lift a wing from their bodies, they all hold wings wide, in full flight.
Yet together.
We whose hearts, even lives, have been broken by abuse can gain strength and life from the same kind of resource–and from another even greater source. (Read linked post.) I can personally testify that this source can enable us to rise and act far above our own capabilities. I could tell so many stories…
But today instead of reading more from me, please click and visitthis page on Denise Hughes’s website, and find out one thing that’s uniting and strengthening hearts wounded by abuse, one more way of raising awareness of a problem we’ve been touching on here this week.
And rejoice.
[You may want to send a friend or two there afterward, too!]
***
Other posts in this “collage” series that touch on the subject of domestic violence and abuse:
“Only Words” is what I called this introductory collage of words, letters, and a lamp, which could represent light—though I can’t say I intended that particularly.
Mini Collage #23 cSylvia Robertson, 2017
I didn’t make the collage for any Big Idea reason.
I’m just nuts about words. So when I saw the study lamp in my junk mail travels, I suppose it made me think of study, reading, and so, words in print. That sent me off to the kitchen, to the old defunct dumbwaiter now become storage for catalogs, throw-out magazines, newspapers, and books. (Treasure trove for a collager, huh?) There, in the piles, I’d permanently stashed some old dictionaries. Out of one I ripped a couple pages, and proceeded from there. Words clipped from magazines and typewriter-letter stickers finished off the composition.
And that was that. Until…
…I learned that right now is the key week in National Domestic Violence Awareness Month (October). …I mentioned it in this post, then got a comment quoting from a Jackson Katz speech on “violence against women.”
Wanting to know who this man was, I searched, and found him giving this TED talk—and indeed, it included the same quote, but went further—and it really made me think about how poorly we use words, and sentence structure, when speaking about “violence against women.”
Himself quoting linguist Julia Penelope, he started with the basic, simple sentence,
“John beat Mary.” Subject-verb-object. Very simple, direct, active. (I emphasized the subject, like we used to do in school…)
Then he showed what happens to that basic fact in our culture.
That sentence quickly becomes…
“Mary was beaten by John.” (Active verb changed to passive; Mary becomes the subject of the sentence, on whom the attention falls. John, meanwhile nearly falls off the side of the paper.)
This morphs quickly into…
“Mary was beaten.”
which soon tends to become
“Mary was battered.”
which in turn changes to
“Mary is a battered woman.” Now this has become her identity!
And what happened to John? He’s been out of sight for some time now!
Jackson Katz’s campaign is to get through to men that violence against women is not a women’s but a men’s issue that they need to take responsibility for, especially male leaders in our culture—particularly to change the prevalent passive mindset.
Applause for him!
But I’m a woman, and I’ve been focusing on what I, and other women, can do about it.
One thing I’ve already explored is the need for us to 1) get better acquainted with abuse tactics and how they’re used [which needs lots of further discussion], and 2) train our ears, and hearts, to stop and listen if someone starts to confide about abuse she’s had happen to her… Er, rather… about the abuse some other certain individual perpetrates against her.
See how I/we’ve been conditioned to word this situation? It’s true: that’s the kind of thing we say. But realizing this helps us see what else we can do that could really help turn the tide: Quit phrasing these things this way. Rephrase into active simple sentences; no passives; no Mary as the subject with an invisible “problem,” like a hidden, inexplicable disease: Someone hit my friend! Her husband abused her!
Just words. But how we use them can either obscure or acknowledge the truth about perpetrators being perpetrators! It may be just a beginning. But it is a beginning.
***
[Another good thing that is happening is the push for bystander intervention to prevent violence before it happens. There’s really more that we can do as bystanders, without jeopardizing our own safety, than we realized. And sometimes that can be just “a word fitly spoken,” too.]
Or… whatever you do that seems to arise from some invitation inside that says, “Come on! Let’s do this!”
It’s about how we’re made. Wired. Designed. Created.
Mini Collage #11 Round on the Ground cSylvia Robertson 2017 Mini Collage #12 Books and Bottles cSylvia Robertson, 2017
A recent blog comment in this series asked me what my intended life metaphor was in the collage that post displayed.
I caught my breath. I hadn’t realized I’d attached “life metaphors” to so many other collages until I read that question. But, then, coming up with such metaphors seems to be part of how I’m wired, too.
Does how I’m wired make others tired? I hope not! But it could. Maybe I need to keep my metaphors to myself more…
Anyhow, there wasn’t one for the collage in question. In fact, I couldn’t even think up one!
Likewise the two collages above. Their great message: There is none! It’s just fun! (Or… Maybe that’s the message.)
I rip or cut out bits of color, texture, shape, line movement, and images or words that just appeal to me—for unidentified and unreasoned reasons. I start “playing” with the pieces of paper, sorting out similar and contrasting ones, pushing them around on a little 4 x 6 card, trying different arrangements.
Why? I don’t know, really! Except that’s a bent I believe God built into my pre-conceived makeup.
Some people run, and end up in marathons; some climb mountains, higher and higher; some sing; some build… (My husband, for example, loves to build buildings! He’s got them all over this property of ours!)… some draw intricate pencil renderings or slap paint onto canvasses. And some collage. What’s inside comes out—if unhindered—like butterfly from cocoon.
True, in areas of creativity, whatever the medium, the expression sometimes reveals thoughts, desires, and emotions in the heart’s hidden parts. Often these revelations surprise the artist/creator as much as anyone. But sometimes there’s no big message, no Great High Truth.
How did “Round on the Ground” come to be?
I saw circles. All through my scraps. Different textures, a few subdued colors. Clippings that invited me to underlay the circle arrangement with gravel and brick. The collage is simply a composition of “repetition with variation”—round stuff! I just liked doing it, and I just like looking at it. And I guess that’s really the bottom line in any kind of visual art. It’s something to look at. Period.
“Books and bottles” came together because a catalog happened to have a bunch of both in their displays, and the subtle colors went together nicely. I arranged the objects in a pattern, but it looked too stiff and static and lifeless. That prompted me to add the (quilted?) curves, lively round flowers, and curved black fabric with white circular designs.
The composition still looked fragmented with the different shelves too cut off from each other. On the catalog spread was a polka-dotted ottoman or two. I cut the dots into rows, echoing both the shelf rectangles and the circular shapes of black cloth and flower patterns. I used these rows to connect shelf to shelf and move the observer’s eye through the whole collage. Why’s the mortar board there? Just because of its color, and because it goes with books.
Just design. Just experimenting. Just fun…
Like God must have had when creating His flamboyant universe! [But there I go, bringing in extra meaning! Oh, my! Oh, me!]
Every now and then in these “31 Days” I plan to post some collaging techniques I’ve learned along the way. The first, today, is called extending a cut shape. I first used this method with my kids, while homeschooling.
It’s really as simple as it sounds.
Mini Collage “Fleur de Free” cSylvia Robertson, 2017
Cut out a shape from a piece of paper. It can be a solid color, or patterned, as used here; fine decorative paper or junk from the mail pile or an old wallpaper sample or remnant of gift wrap. Something that will lie flat (nothing too rumply) will be easier to cut for this method.
The shape can be just about anything, too, but keeping it basic and simple is a good idea, certainly at least to start. In today’s collage it’s an egg shape, with top and bottom straight (either from being cut from a rectangle in the first place or leveled off later to fit the 4×6 card. I think the former is the case, because the flower pattern I cut egg-shaped was a rug in a furnishings catalog—Lots of beautiful, even spectacular rugs out there these days!…)
Next, lay your shape on a cutting mat or board, and cut a few lines, straight or curved, all the way from side to side or top to bottom. An exacto type knife is the ideal tool, but if you don’t have one, you could pencil your lines, then cut with scissors. Here you can see one vertical cut at the left side (better visual dynamics than a static down-the-middle), and several repeated, parallel cuts (not all equidistant) running hoizontal.
Lay the pieces in order on a background (in this case, the plain white card—a good choice actually, especially with a patterned paper shape).
Then spread them apart, thus extending the shape. (So when you cut out your shape in the first place, you need consider the area available on your background piece and how much spread you’re going to give the pieces.)
The extending above is fairly regular, with little difference in distances between pieces. The open white area down the middle does swell toward its middle, making its own contours somewhat ovate. But all else is fairly regular here. This is not necessary. You can experiment with different distances and see what you like.
Don’t aim for a masterpiece, but a learning exploration.
Once satisfied with your arrangement, paste down the pieces.
You might want to add other cut pieces to add interest and enhance the overall design, as I did, above. I pointed the leaves and the flower stem in toward the main design to draw the viewer’s eye that way. You could keep this in mind, too—or not. There’s no science to this except that it’s experimentation.
Try it, and have fun! If you have kids or grandkids around, what a great way to get them away from the iPad for a while and get their creative juices flowing—and do the same for yourself, too!
