Marilyn makes collages as offerings to people, as opportunities to express her regard for them or to wish them well. This process began when she was part of a pastoral care group at the Long Beach Unitarian Universalist church. Once a month they gathered before a table of images and papers, putting collages together as they chatted.
Later, after Marilyn had moved 1,000 miles away to Rose Villa, one of her oldest and dearest friends was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In the months that led to her death Marilyn did what she could from afar, sending collage cards almost daily. Some were funny and appealed to her friend’s absurdist sense of humor, some were just loving and supportive. When Marilyn visited her prior to her dying she had strung all of the cards in the archways of her home.
Since then Marilyn has used collage-making as an opportunity to slow down and to focus on people, beauty, and creativity… and then to give it all away. She makes cards in spurts, allowing the clutter of paper, glue, scissors, and filing folders of images to occupy the kitchen table for days.
Some images are done deliberately with specific people in mind and some are just the result of her admiration for a color, a pattern or an image. Some cards emerge from a sense she has about someone, an intuition. And some just please her, cards with absurdist images oddly or weirdly juxtaposed… just for the fun of it. Marilyn loves the intuitive process, the spark of recognition when several images are just right together, the resolution that comes after false starts. And she loves being surrounded by beautiful materials, scrap that she’s saved from the trash.
