Bruce Helander with one of his  original collages

This past weekend I spent an artful weekend.  I share just the first part,  9 a.m. to 4 p.m. only $30  at the Center for Creative Education *with collage artist Bruce Helander. At the modest price of $30 for 7 hours. (a gift for any artist to oneself)  It was an art form that is not my bailiwick, I enjoyed the class when I first took it, at the Woodstock School of Art, so here, it was being offered and I needed to get out of the box. 

title of this work           “I love Paris in the springtime”

First, this class that I took at the Center for Creative Education.  Just 20 minutes north of Lake Worth and a facility that is near a charming little enterprise zone. Restaurants, decorator shops, lots of parking and coffee house always a de riguer. The class was full to capacity 40 plus students.  This work right below was created with intention and gets changed out periodically rotated in and out of frames. 

 12 x 12 ready to be matted and hung.

Here showing off the work that was done on Saturday. No one wanted to take the lunch break.  Some of the students were repeating students from previous years and it showed.  Like these above & below.  Not quite sure of the title could be just a working title for now. 

title eye boot?

Bruce worked around the room, everyone got the personal touch and of course.  I have never seen anyone use scissors so nimbly as when he did the demo.

Class Demo

  The work that was created here seemed almost impossible with the amazing number of resources that were laid out.  Some came to learn to enhance their future presentations as we all have done vision boards that are wrinkly, fall apart before they are even realized. Using the proper structure and proper glues and techniques thought by an expert such us Bruce, makes all the difference for the finished work of art.  That is meant to survive, as the image below currently being showcased at the MET   Joseph Cornell circa 1955.  Bruce Helander’s introduction to our collage class mentioned Juan Gris and his work.

Joseph Cornell’

Juan Gris’s celebrated collage The Man at the Café (1914)  below right inspired the series Birds of a feather the series now at The Met,  through April 15.

Joseph Cornell’s Homage to Juan Gris reunites for the first time nearly a dozen boxes from Cornell’s Gris series together with the Cubist masterpiece, The Man at the Café. There are inside jokes, puns and wordplay in French that tie the art.

• how was the rest of the evening,  I spent it at the Opera and enjoyed the performance of Candide by Leonard Bernstein based on Voltaire’s book.  One artists inspires another and no it is not copyright infringement but homage.