My grandmother Mary Raine gave me this Christmas tree when she was 93 years old. She no longer felt like putting it up every year, especially after the deaths of my father Ron and his younger brother Bob, so she passed the tradition to me in 2004, the year my uncle died. At the end of a Christmas haunted by absence, I carefully wrapped the treasured tree in my suitcase for the rigours of its plane journey from Missouri to Ontario.
I hadn’t decorated a Christmas tree since I was a teenager, but Grandma Raine’s gift inspired me to start again. My mother also gave me some decorations that had been in the family since the 1960’s, including cookie dough ornaments I remember from my childhood.
Artifacts like the dignified Wise Man connect me to home, family, and Christmas traditions, for when I rest him against the tree in 2020, I return in memory to a much earlier era. Once upon a time, my father, mother, and brother used to decorate a full-sized tree together while Birthday the cat lay in wait to attack the glass balls on the lower branches. Christmas carols bathed the tree-trimming task in familiar melodies such as the “pa rum pum pum pum” of Dad’s favourite, The Little Drummer Boy.
I’m fond of the cracks in these circular faces that once inhabited the tree of my childhood home. The cracks testify to the survival of countless Christmas seasons, each with its own tales of cat-paw attacks, breakages, and transfers to new storage locales.
The small red wagon has a story, too. Mom bought it for me one December in the 1970’s when we visited Kansas City’s Wornall House Museum to see it decked out in nineteenth-century Christmas décor.
To blend new memories with the old, I supplemented the original ornaments from Kansas City with ones I bought from Ten Thousand Villages, a shop that specializes in handcrafted items ethically traded from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and many other countries.
Angels, elephants, lions, and moons mingle on the branches with a reindeer, a yak, and a yeti. Together, they honor Toronto’s multiculturalism and integrate the Christian traditions of my childhood with the religious and cultural pluralism that energize today.
In addition to a tree rooted in the present and the past, festive details like colourful textiles that Grandma Raine crafted — place mats and Christmas tree skirts — brighten the living room.
The other skirt can be seen in this post’s opening photograph.
Also, two books that I received as presents in the 1970’s surface with the arrival of Christmastide. The first one is Christmas Stories Round the World, kindly given by my cousin Denise.
The second book, The Night Before Christmas, evokes happy memories of my parents reading the poem on Christmas Eve, just as their parents read it to them as children. The rhymes and folksy illustrations contained in Grandma Raine’s 1974 gift are enjoyed to this day.
Finally, giant postcards that my mother purchased in the 1960’s serve as Christmassy accessories for staircase spindles. I love how they jazz up the stairs and suffuse the atmosphere with psychedelic cheer.
All in all, sharing stories of Grandma Raine’s tree and other yuletide trappings has heightened my gratitude for gifts that gather layers of meaning as time passes. Thank you, dear reader, for indulging this narrative sleigh-ride through topographies of memory and family history. May your celebrations be merry, healthy, and bright!
To create this collage, I repeatedly placed an ink-loaded paintbrush at various points at the top of the canvas and let the rivulets of ink find their own pathways down. After the vertical lines dried, I turned the canvas and repeated the process in order to create the intersecting horizontal lines.
I liked how the ink lines formed folksy quilt-like boxes, so I added colored papers to highlight the patchwork shapes.
Ink Drip Patchwork, Catherine Raine 2019
The spontaneous blending of the streams of ink as they met each other motivated me to select transparent papers for the collage. Not wanting to cover the ink tracks, I chose papers that would both show off and interact with the colors resting underneath them.
Detail from Ink Drip Patchwork, Catherine Raine 2019Detail from Ink Drip Patchwork, Catherine Raine 2019Detail from Ink Drip Patchwork, Catherine Raine 2019Detail from Ink Drip Patchwork, Catherine Raine 2019
I hope you enjoyed Ink Drip Patchwork! I highly recommend trying this fun art process.
Complete galleryAn engineering student envisions her future and encourages a visit to the universe.Celebrating Canada’s multiculturalism — “Be Yourself”“La Vie Est Belle” — Vision of owning a flower shop in the future“I want to have a house in the quiet countryside.”For Freedom“This collage shows my interest in art.”“The collage is about my visit to Canada.”“The penguin wishes he could fly like other birds.”Be Happy! “Botany is one of my interests.”Detail from “To Infinity and Beyond”“Where Are You Going? To Infinity and Beyond!”
When I came to Canada, I had to start again at the bottom. I struggled and had a lot of stress. The stairs show my difficult climb back up to success.(Geraldine, workshop participant, 2015)
Since 2013, I have led more than thirty collage sessions, and each one has testified to the power of art to nudge emotions, memories, and personal wisdom to the surface. Bridging visual and linguistic boundaries, collage creates a world of meaning in which a yoga pose, a set of stairs, and a gold coin symbolize an immigrant’s struggle to regain lost ground. As an artist and ESL educator, I appreciate collage’s unique ability to sound the depths and reveal insights that elude verbal access, thus providing a perceptive gift that builds second-language fluency and morale. Having witnessed the alchemic energy that transforms ordinary paper and glue into artistic creations, I would like to share my collage-teaching experience with a wider audience. To showcase the learning potential of this versatile modality, I will focus on the process of workshop preparation, execution, and closing harvest.
Whether conducting a session with my own students or visiting the ESL classes of colleagues, I am delighted to promote collage as an educational tool. To harmonize proposed collage lessons with the curriculum, they are usually given a theme connected to relevant textbook chapters, and some typical ones have included Relaxation, Health, Nature Conservation, Families, and Personality Traits. The artwork that results from these themed sessions provides meaningful material for discussion and written reflection, which instructors often incorporate into assigned presentations or paragraphs.
With a theme and a firm date established, workshop preparations start with a dive into several thick folders from my picture collection (an entity that has taken on voluminous dimensions of its own). As I search for images that can be tailored to the theme, I celebrate the latent promise of diverse colors, textures, shapes, and lines found in magazines, leaflets, wrapping paper, hand-made paper, tissue paper, fancy bags, and commercial packaging. While sorting through the folders, I often contemplate the artistic destiny of items such as a page from a Rumi calendar or a stamp from an old postcard. After the image folders have been customized for a particular class, I gather the requisite backings, scissors, glue, and embellishments, sometimes making flying visits to the dollar store if necessary.
When the day of the session arrives, I shoulder two large bags full of materials and make it my mission to fire up enthusiasm for art, an attitude that lays the foundation for a lively and productive session. Upon arrival at the designated classroom, I ask for a show of hands to gauge how many participants have tried collage before. If the term is unfamiliar, I show them a sample collage and call attention to the French origins of the word (coller, to glue) while flourishing a glue stick in the air. Then I explain that collage is a process in which different pieces of paper are arranged and glued to a backing to create a new piece of art.
Before the actual collage-making begins, I assure the class that drawing skills are not a prerequisite. Hoping to alleviate possible anxiety over creative deficiencies, I strive to foster a non-judgmental learning environment, for I want participants to feel free to take a playful approach to the activity, setting aside worries about making mistakes. Thankful for the respite from critical evaluation, many students find that cutting, tearing, and pasting can relieve the stress of testing, grades, and error-correction, all of which permeate second-language study in college. Moreover, a relaxed approach gives participants the chance to defy negative beliefs such as “I am not creative” and let their imagination surprise them.
To avoid slowing the session’s momentum with overly-detailed instructions about technique, I prefer to pass around several examples of previous students’ artwork and let these exemplars provide inspiration. After the samples have made their rounds, I ask each person what colour of backing they would like and supply the tables with scissors and glue. Then it is time to release multitudes of papers from their orderly folders into gloriously messy piles. As colourful items spill out with abandon, eager hands pounce on individual images that clamour to be chosen. When I see how swiftly the learners become engrossed in gathering their images and committing to a mental picture of what they want to create, it makes me happy.
Collage workshop in progress, 2015
Once the session is in full flow and the students completely immersed, it is fun to intensify the joyfully-strewn chaos of materials by adding alphabet stickers, stencils, markers, fake jewels, ribbons, and tissue paper to the mix. With student-selected music playing in the background, the room hums with kinetic engagement, which is in dramatic contrast to the traditional pedagogical tableau of quiet students in rows of desks, immobilized by lectures. Instead, workshop participants are free to stand up and browse materials on other tables or study the composition of classmates’ collages. As the dynamic work continues apace, someone might call out a request for a fish, a field of snow, or a feather, and these calls activate a general scramble to oblige the seeker. Invariably, cries for vowels become increasingly urgent as the sheets of alphabet stickers become more and more depleted. When requested letters or visual items are unearthed, it is rewarding for the helpers because they have provided exactly what fellow artists need to realize their visions.
Detail from student collage on the theme of Endangered Animals, 2018
Near the end of the workshop, busy heads bend low over the tables in a final burst of concentration, determined to add finishing details like a border of faux pearls or a tissue-paper flower with a questing bee. One by one, collages are declared finished, admired by onlookers, and then placed in a spontaneous classroom gallery that is curated with the aid of masking tape or magnets. To gaze at the rapidly-expanding galleries that emerge is to be awed by the creativity, energy, and humour on display, which is visible in spirited details such as a giraffe with a bedazzled purple bow-tie or two loops of string affixed by blue gems that seal the eyelids of an anguished god.
Detail from student collage, 2017Student collage, 2017
As soon as the galleries are complete, cellphone cameras click like mad, capturing each learner’s individual work and that of their classmates. Sometimes students will make videos of the displays, walking slowly to savour each artistic offering. Whether they record the collective works or simply examine them, it is heartwarming to see groups of rapt students standing in front of the exhibits and exclaiming over art that had not existed two hours previously. Gazing at evidence of simple materials magicked into art by virtue of imaginative effort rarely fails to impact viewers; collage reminds us that creativity is our human birthright.
Thanks to the pop-up exhibits, fresh artwork now brightens classroom walls and serves as a rich resource for written and verbal responses. For example, the following transcription of a collage presentation in a beginner’s ESL class contains visionary wisdom: “Sometimes we hear a noise and we think . . . it is something dangerous . . . but usually it’s something like this cute dog who want to play . . . Fear pulls you back. If we release our fear, we can reach to the stars” (Sergi, 2013). Sergi’s classmates and I were inspired by the comforting message of his piece, which stays with me to this day.
(Sergi’s speaking presentation, 2013)
I am very grateful for the courageous willingness of over 350 students like Sergi to try an unconventional classroom activity that encourages camaraderie, poetic thinking, and artistic confidence. Until the next collage workshop, may your garden be protected by an Ewok and your baby panda lulled to sleep by a lute.
Detail from student collage on the theme of Social Media, 2017Detail from student collage on the topic of Healthy Lifestyles, 2017
Note: A version of this essay was first published in the Marshall Alumni Newsletter, Fall 2018
Black Linn Falls, HermitageHermitageView of Ullapool Harbour from Ferry Boat InnBoat reflections in Ullapool HarbourIvy on the sycamore tree behind Ullapool Museum
HallgrÃmskirkja Detail from HallgrÃmskirkja’s doorHallgrÃmskirkja’s nave Harpa Concert Hall and Conference CentreLobby of Harpa Concert Hall and Concert CentreDowntown ReykjavikArtistic garden wallView from whale-watching boat
My grandmother Mary Raine gave me this Christmas tree when she was 93 years old. She no longer felt like putting it up every year, especially after the deaths of my father Ron and his younger brother Bob, so she passed the tradition to me in 2004, the year my uncle died. At the end of a Christmas haunted by absence, I carefully wrapped the treasured tree in my suitcase for the rigours of its plane journey from Missouri to Ontario.
Angels, elephants, lions, and moons mingle on the branches with a reindeer, a yak, and a yeti. Together, they honor Toronto’s multiculturalism and integrate the Christian traditions of my childhood with the religious and cultural pluralism that energize today.
