Playing with Collage

by Jeannie Baker, Jeannie Baker (Illustrator)

Overview

With this gem of a book, readers are invited to trust their instincts — and play — as they follow the advice of an award-winning collage artist.

Whether using dried flowers or tiny shells, spaghetti or postage stamps, Jeannie Baker draws from the world around her to make work that is singularly beautiful and imaginative. Incorporating a wide range of textures, her arresting collage pieces have earned her international acclaim. Now she shares her secrets and encourages readers to get creative: each of the four main sections in Playing with Collage presents an abstract collage by the artist and offers suggestions and starting points for anyone aspiring to master the art.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536205398
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	10/22/2019
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	1,079,326
Product dimensions:	11.00(w) x 10.40(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Jeannie Baker is the author-illustrator of a number of picture books, including Mirror, Circle, Where the Forest Meets the Sea, Window, Home in the Sky, and Belonging, among many others. Originally from the U.K., Jeannie Baker lives in Australia.

Editorial Reviews

Inspiration and education for making collages at home. Collage artist Baker combines suggestions about process and materials with representations of her own finished pieces to tempt readers into the creative world of collage...gorgeous and visually inspirational.
—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2019-07-24
Inspiration and education for making collages at home.

Collage artist Baker combines suggestions about process and materials with representations of her own finished pieces to tempt readers into the creative world of collage. Photographs showing a technique of brushing glue onto a surface and then pressing sand onto it are just as beguiling as sumptuous spreads of "kitchen materials" (eggshell, spices, seeds, herbs), "nature materials" (lichen, leaves, grasses, barks), and "beach materials" (driftwood, bleached bones, tumbled glass, gravel, shells). Baker's own finished collages, reproduced in Plaza's photographs, are colorful and brimming with textures. Most are abstract, though one of sky and clouds features a gorgeous use of corrugated cardboard to represent a window. The inspiration here lies in the photographs' glossy beauty, the vast options laid out for materials, and the ideas for conceptual process. There's no exact instruction about how to glue such unwieldy stuff as fungi, sea sponge, or "marine gastropod eggs," and although the text guides budding artists to avoid "anything still living," information for discerning what's alive must be sought elsewhere. The target audience's age is fluid: Suggestions to use scalpels, superglue, and a light box—plus a suggestion to build a plywood frame—imply older readers than do notes to secure adult supervision when using plain scissors. Some recommended techniques take two to three weeks.

Missing a few how-to tidbits but gorgeous and visually inspirational. (introduction) (Nonfiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews