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The art of abstract collage: You can’t control the outcome

When Smithsonian Associates art teacher Sharon Robinson starts to unpack her plastic tubs and shopping bags full of art supplies in Room 3038 of the Ripley Center, you could be forgiven for thinking she was preparing to restock the shelves at Michael’s.

The veteran Associates Studio Arts teacher pulls out bubble wrap, watercolor paper, pre-cut mat boards, cheese cloth, ink bottles with eyedroppers, brushes, glue, tissue paper, plastic wrap, spray bottles and more! She is prepping for another free-wheeling artistic adventure that others might call an art class.

Sharon Robinson

The eight students in her Spring Fundamentals of Abstract Collage class were about to embark on a six- session Saturday adventure in creative expression. And they didn’t have to be accomplished painters or classically trained artists to let their artistic flag fly. It was going to be a lesson in pure creative wanderlust. And what a treat it was!

Robinson is not your typical art teacher. (If there even is such a thing.) Raised in New Jersey, she earned a Masters degree from MIT in Urban Design and Community Development. She logged more than 20 years in her career in transit and urban planning, working in Los Angeles and Portland. But today, she’s going on 25 years of being a full-time artist.

She discovered collage when she learned about Romare Bearden. Before that, she gravitated to watercolor painting, taking it up while living in Portland, where she belonged to the Society of Watercolor Artists.

Today, back on the East Coast, her full-time day job is being an artist. She’s been one since 1999, exhibiting on both coasts and teaching in between.

Robinson’s specialty is abstract collage. She says the medium of collage is an amazingly versatile art form, with no limit when it comes to techniques and materials. The students in her Associates class were about to learn this firsthand. All those materials she unpacked would be the components for a chemistry lab in creativity.

Abstract collage by Sharon Robinson

Robinson does a lot of demonstrations in class, and then the class participates in exercises. She shows, for example, how dense drops of ink on water-saturated watercolor paper create an amazing living constellation of color. Then you save that paper and tear bits of it off to serve as background elements of your ultimate composition. The class also watched as Robinson demo-ed the process of image transferring of photos, they saw the unique pattern left by bubble wrap layered over ink and a whole host of other techniques.

None of the students in her spring semester class were full-time artists. They were a cross section of the DC diaspora—professionals from all ranks, policy folks, healthcare people, government specialists and techies of all sorts. But they all came ready to let their creative flags fly and if they came away with something frameable, all the better!

Just listening to a few outtakes from her class, you start to get the picture of how this veteran art teacher fosters creativity.

“This stuff is not for someone who likes to control the outcome. You can’t control it, so don’t even try.”

The fun starts with an encounter with cheese cloth and Saran Wrap. Robinson cuts off a piece of cheese cloth and drops it on some ink-soaked paper creating this nice grid-like pattern of thread. And as a bonus, she tells the class where to pick up cheese cloth at a good price (Lowe’s it turns out, who knew?).

Then it’s on to the Saran Wrap, where Robinson engages in an extended tussle with the stuff, trying to cut it into small squares to layer over ink-stained paper. One student observes after the demo: “there was the essence of an SNL skit somewhere in there.”

Robinson’s ongoing commentary about her materials, shows how intimately involved she becomes during the process of creating mixed media art. “The cheese cloth came out nicely, except where it stuck to some stuff.” “Some really wonderful stuff happening over here.” “We got some nice granulations from the salt…you can just rub it off.” “I always use gloss because it makes it look like stained glass, especially when using tissue paper.”

paper collage in shades of pink, blue and brown

“Paper Frenzy” collage by Sharon Robinson

Speaking of ink-stained tissue paper, she advises, “this has the potential for being messy. If you’re going to try this at home be careful about where you are doing it.” (It would be like inviting Jackson Pollack to do a demo on your dining room table.) She recommends using a portable hair dryer to stop the interactions of paint and ink and glitter and tissue paper at the point where you like what’s happening.

But for the real control freaks she gives this advice: “This stuff is not for someone who likes to control the outcome. You can’t control it, so don’t even try.”

And that’s the essence of her artistic mantra: “Let it percolate.” See where it goes. It’s like the materials are the opening act, dictating who the main characters will be in the composition. So have fun with that, run with it. Essentially, the alchemy of the art has free reign here, at least until the artist starts to compose.

Until the very end, she might still be adding texture, rearranging little pieces of this and that, superimposing them into something special. The final composition is where the collage artist ultimately becomes the maestro. It’s the final act in a massive exercise in creativity from beginning to end. Robinson’s next mixed media class, “Paper Frenzy” will run from August 16 to September 6 in the Ripley Center and it should be fun!

This post was contributed by Janet Hewitt, a volunteer with Smithsonian Associates in the Studio Arts program. She also is an award-winning financial journalist and freelance writer.