Come play with design and humor as you learn techniques to create layered collage. Teaching artist Joan Kauppi (Red Lake) shares her insights “ I have experimented in many art forms and while I loved those, they didn’t keep my attention or I didn't feel like I belonged to them. Collage is different for me. I can be a storyteller by creating a single piece. Once images are merged and transformed the stories change, sometimes into absurdity. I love to combine images from different decades, eras, sizes, media type, mediums and old, worn out paper. It's a participatory art form whether one is the artist or the viewer by creating ideas, messages or stories that vary by imaginations.”

Art material supplied.
Door prizes.
Food Provided.

About Joan:
I became an artist by happenstance or perhaps having the heart of an artist manifested the ability or maybe opportunity to call myself one. I am an Anishinaabe woman, mother, grandmother, auntie, great-auntie, employee and my best friend is a dog. I am also a Split Feather; an Anishinaabe adoptee from the 60’s. The Split Feather and Artist labels should merge flawlessly but they are like oil and water; imposter syndrome is the clear winner.

Throughout my six decades I have experimented in many art forms and while I loved those, they didn’t keep my attention. Collage is different. There is the transformation of merging images and the image stories change. I love putting pieces together from different decades, sizes, photographs, illustrations, paintings, postcards and old worn out papers. This is a new beginning, a new story, a new place of acceptance that was self-created.

The isolation of the pandemic afforded me time to watch and read about multiple art forms and I had to try my hand. June 2023 will be two years since this journey began and hopefully will be around for many years in the future.