"Root Stimulator"

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"Prayer is the root stimulator of faith." Ruth Hailey Barton wrote a remarkable book called Sacred Rhythms. I was struck by her statement that the only time she feels truly at peace is when she is praying. In these chaotic times, we can stimulate our faith through prayer and stay in peace.

Collage is a wonderful way to learn a lot of things about design. The difficulty comes in calming the chaos that can develop by placing disparate pieces of paper together on a support.

The same elements and principles of design apply to collage. It is still important to pay attention to the division of space...designing the corners...and having each of the elements of design (line, direction, shape, hue, value, texture, size) have a dominating and contrasting element. For instance, in this piece, the dominating line is straight, but there are also some contrasting curved lines. Lime green is the dominating color, but only by a little bit. The dominating shape is a  rectangle, but there are also some torn papers that bring in a different kind of edge and a few diagonals. The dominating texture is printing on rice paper, but there is also a contrasting texture of text overlaid with plain rice paper as well as a piece of a line engraved collage element.

These are just a few things I think about when putting a collage together and this is only one way. If you want to tame the chaos a bit more...use mostly neutral colors or limit your color choices to one intense color plus black and white such as the piece today. Collage is very exciting and it can work well when it is designed well. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.