Toddler Collage

The other day we had our official Spring Cleaning Day at the offices of the fine publisher for which I work (see very satisfying final results below). In clearing out some files in my desk I found one holding loads and loads of old images that, at various times in the past, I used to have pinned up. Years ago we worked in a different building that had traditional ugly gray office cubicles, and I made it my mission in life to cover every inch of my cubicle walls with things I liked better to look at. Point being, this was a lot of very old but cool stuff that I found. So I brought it all home thinking it would be fun to use to make collages with Mabel. Now, this child takes a toddler art class of the sort that involves lots of projects made from pre-cut shapes of construction paper, so she knows all about glue sticks, but she's never to my knowledge made a free-form collage before (I exclude our annual family Valentine project because she has up to now, only used stickers for that). So we got out our art supplies and I started showing her pictures and asking "Do you want to use this one?" and "where do you want to put it?" And damn if the girl didn't decisively select, compose, and glue down a grouping of images into the collage you see above with only very minimal assistance from myself. No one I've shown this to will believe the grid organization was her idea and not mine, but the fact remains that it came from her very own brain. This for sure gave me one of those spooky oh-my-god-you-are-really-not-a-baby-anymore-are-you? moments. Such a funny frisson, combining melancholy and glee as it does.