Narrative image

We have noticed that many of the students at the collage workshop prefer to do narrative work depicting events in their past, or imagined scenarios from the future. For this reason, they have responded to the work of Romare Bearden, whose collages depict his childhood in the South.  

The piece below was done by a young man who is an apprentice barber. Unlike most of the university students in the workshop, he speaks no English, but his enthusiasm more than makes up for it.  Here he depicts a time when he almost cut a person while giving them a haircut. The red spot indicating blood is there to convey the trauma of the event, even though (as we understand it) it was only a close call.  We love how he has constructed the room with black-and-white tile floor and improbable high arched windows. The magic of collage is that it encourages the combining of unlikely elements, depending on what imagery is available.