Making Faces

When I arrived at the art class I saw we would be making collages. All we were told to do was to make a face. We could take different features and put them together. The woman next to me announced she wanted brown skinned latino models, since they're hard to find we should let her know if we saw any. I opened the first magazine and started looking for different colours and textures. Somehow I decided that my face would be green, and then the hair would be blue. As I flipped through the magazine I cut corners off the pages and occasionally images that intrigued me. Being that it was Canadian Living there were a lot of food images. I saw some Cheerios that announced themselves as eyes, some pomogranate seeds as the mouth, some peas as a hand, and so on. I started to feel uncomfortable when I looked at others faces. Mine looked rather alien to say the least. Conversations turned about weight and body images, and I remained enthralled in my search for interesting colours and textures. The face even spilled over the sides of the paper she gave us as I pieced the large magazine slices together.

Again I didn't know what to say about the face. She asked me what the colours represented. When I suggested green could be jealousy I was chided for comparing myself to others in the class. She said green can mean hope and blue healing. The face made me say that I don't really like the way I look and I just felt like crying. During the break I went to the Taizé prayer for a couple of songs, and it was nice to be in the reassuring space. When I came back everyone was sitting at another table and we were told to make an advertisement for ourselves. Again I did not want to make an advertisement. I took a blue pastel and slowly drew one line and then another. A girl appeared reaching to the sides of the paper. A tree started growing out of her head and coloured ribbons came down and wrapped around her arms. When asked to explain I said that I don't fit on paper. Because of the tree I was asked if I liked my hair and I said yes. Then I said I also liked my eyes. I didn't really feel like talking because I didn't have much to say.

Next week will be the last class. It's hard to say if I feel any more confident, but nonetheless it's an interesting experience. I am reminded that I like making art.