I entered the now defunct restaurant/gift shop in Turkey, Texas. In a small town like Turkey, I wasn’t expecting much out of the place. I found the proprietor/waitress/chef meticulously snipping and clipping pictures from a Better Homes & Gardens magazine. I asked what she was doing, and she smiled a Cheshire cat grin. “Oh,” she replied, “just making a little collage.”

Bless her heart. I had to muffle a smirk and bite my tongue not to make a cutting remark, lest she give me a good pasting. My 10th grade English teacher forced my class to clip pictures and words from magazines to make a collage to “describe ourselves.” They were pretty awful.

Then, I took a gander at her “little collage.”

My eyes nearly popped out of my head. I tried to act uninterested as I asked her what she would charge for it, and she said, “Oh, about $8.00.” I sat there at the table until she finished it, paid my money, walked out and have been enjoying it ever since. She didn’t even value her work enough to sign her name to it.

Since that day, I’ve had a new respect for collage as art. When I heard that a Romare Bearden exhibit was coming to the Dallas Museum of Art, I got all antsy. I gathered a group of friends to go with me to view the exhibit. There was only one word for it: amazing.

Romare Bearden (1912-1988) was a prolific artist who worked in many mediums and artistic styles. He is probably best known, though, for his collage work. Colorful and richly textured, his collages told stories. In 1968, two of them were chosen to grace the covers of Time Magazine and Fortune Magazine.

The Village of Yo is on display at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut.

Though Bearden was born in North Carolina, he grew up in Harlem, and later had a second home in the Caribbean. The influences of all of these locales can be seen in his works.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a wonderful on-line “Explore and Learn” series about artists. The one for Romare Bearden has music by the Branford Marsalis Quartet, and features “The Block,” by Bearden.

The Romare Bearden Foundation has a full biography, as well as examples of his work. Cover Art from books, oil paintings, water color paintings and collages are all there for you to view.

Seeing any kind of art on-line is a poor substitute for the real thing. Watch for the opportunity to view his work at a gallery or museum. I was shocked that some of the pieces were tiny, but had to remember that he was clipping pictures from magazines to make the artwork. You might just find it fascinating.

You can find several books on collage, but one of my favorites is called Creative Collage Techniques, by Nita Leland & Virginia Lee Williams. I keep it handy just for inspiration. One of these days, I’m going to try my hand at it.