HAPPY NEW YEAR 2024
An open end of year appreciation letter
I decided to send our last newsletter of the year on the last day of the year: after 52 weekly challenges - for some of you 261 weekly challenges – and counting.
Thank you so much for yet another wonderful year filled with creativity, community and the most amazing collages and contributions.
Thanks to all of you who keep showing up year after year, and thanks to those of you who only joined recently. Thanks for all the support, advice, encouragement, and help you keep showing each other. That’s what this community is for. Thanks for trying, for showing up, for daring to share, and for giving creativity a go. I know it can be scary at the beginning. Thanks to all of you for keeping this community alive and thriving.
Also many thanks for all your emails and messages of support to me. For your offers to help. For checking in and your concern when the schedule seems of. For kindly pointing out typos, wrong dates and broken links on our website! For your patience while I try to keep up with Instagram’s everchanging algorithms. And the most amazing thing of all, for pointing out when I missed, thanks to said algorithms, a complete stranger’s work that you think deserves attention. Thank you, thank you, thank you! You keep my believe in humanity (and social media) alive!
And last but by no means least, thanks to all of you who signed up to our artist directory, who took out a paying subscription to our newsletter, bought one of our workbooks, or made a donation to the collective. Your financial support helps keep this collective going and all its activities free for all.
It's hard to believe that we are heading into the 6th (!!!) year of weekly creative challenges. Six! Years!
May the coming year be filled with paper, glue, and scissors. Lots of love from Paris, and Happy New Year!
Petra
founding mother & chief cheerleader
Substack, this here newsletter platform, offers paid subscriptions, but this is no paywall. We believe in making art accessible to the widest possible audience, and our newsletter will remain free for anyone to read. Opting for a paid subscription is a way to support the collective and all we do. So is signing up to our Artist Directory. Think about it :)
NEWS
His cut-and-paste illustrations are part of a long-standing zine continuum, made possible in part by helpers who furnished him with pens, glue, newspapers and other collage-worthy materials, in addition to food and other necessities. - A Man Hiding from the Nazis Made 95 Issues of a Highly Creative Zine (1943–1945) - via Open Culture
Taking venerable paintings of ancient socialites, Hermes uses digital collage techniques to conceal the faces of the subjects. The concealment can take the form of an absurd mask, a mound of fabric, or a ridiculous wig entirely created from details of the original work itself. - Volker Hermes Remixes History with Tongue-in-Cheek Photo Collage Portraits - via printmag
During World War II, a German Jew hiding out in the Netherlands came up with a creative form of resistance to the Nazis. He assembled a satirical magazine filled with handwritten poetry and covered in collages. - The writer who published a satirical magazine while hiding in a Dutch home during WWII - via The World
For this series, using paint, I completely changed the scene of the original picture, removing the details I didn’t want such as cars, people, signs. A picture — one I took or one I found — changed into a different and new place. It became my very own stage. And when the stage is ready, then I put figures in it, using collage. It is usually me in the picture or a relative. I take time to get into my character, using make up and clothes to disguise my identity. - Best of 2023 : Galerie XII : An Interview with Paolo Ventura by Zoé Isle de Beauchaine - via The Eye of Photography
PCC
A selection of challenge submissions from last week is up on our website and can be seen here, the image prompt for next week is available to download here
Our 2024 Workbook is out and available for sale on our website. Our weekly creative challenge remains free and open to everyone and everything, digital or analog artists, French or not. The workbook is an optional add-on for those who prefer to work with paper and don’t want to print our images themselves. Like every year, the book is designed so that you can either take it apart or create your collages in the book itself. Week numbers and image sources are on the back of each image, so even if your books falls apart at one point, you will always know what’s what!
And last but not least, have a look at and/or submit to our ‘other’ Instagram account Paris Collage Collective Unlimited where we showcase collages that have absolutely nothing to do with our weekly creative challenge.
If you have any news about exhibitions, publications or events you want so share with the community, please send an email with all relevant information and at least one link to a website or venue to: hello@pariscollagecollective.com
Happy New Year, Petra! Thank you for all that you do for PCC. Here’s to another fruitful year I. 2024. 🎉🎉🎉
Wishing you a very Happy New Year! Thank you for all you do!