Dear Liza,
A while back I showed you the start of a collage book in whichI will try and illustrate all the stages of life. For whatever reason, the first page I did was close to the end…
So I decided to go back to the beginning.
Choosing what to call the stages was my first challenge, but I went with my first inspirations. From Preconsciousness through Puberty to Oblivion and Joy, I printed them out and put them on the inside cover. Because I was sloppy, the page didn’t come out quite like I wanted, but it will do for now. The beauty of collage is that I can paper it over and do it again.
For my first stage of life, I started with Preconsciouness, when we are growing but not aware of anything yet. I got the images from a Time Life book called The Body from the 1960s and added some tissue paper and paint speckles.
I haven’t done “Comfort” or “Cognition” because I can’t see them in my mind yet, so the next one I have is “Organization”, when we are figuring out how people and things are the same and different..
As you can see, babies can get some things wrong. They might think butterflies are flowers, or that a stuffed dog is a real dog.
The next page is about learning to talk, with jumbles of words overlapping each other.
The next page I have (almost) finished is Mobility. I imagine this is what it must have felt like, balancing on our own two feet for the first time. A precarious, dangerous step that we all needed to take.
Those are all the pages I have done for now. This is a long term project and I work on it as ideas come to me.
Love,
Grandma Judy
Dear Liza 