order, disorder, repeat
collage mind newsletter / vol. 47 / November 2025
Dear Friends:
Last year I decided to change up my physical mail, curious to see what would arise from folding in material that intrigued me amongst the usual bills and unwanted catalogs. So, I joined the International Society of Surrealism, because the bi-annual journal that came with membership felt like a good choice. And I subscribed to The Anarchist Review of Books for the same reason.
I’ve found that having a bit of surrealism and anarchy in my stack of mail is a small but powerful adjustment. I never know when the issues will arrive, what they will bring, how they will adjust the energetic dial of my thinking. I love this not-knowing. It’s a small investment for a hard-to-value shift in perspective.
Last week I received the latest issue of The International Journal of Surrealism, and it is entirely about collage. Admittedly, it’s academic writing that will light few hearts afire and many of the originally colorful images are rendered in black and white, but… surrealist collage from Mexico, Brazil, post-war Japan. About half a dozen artists I hadn’t heard of. My collage mind was whirring and humming.
I dog-eared a bunch of pages and now, looking back on what I underlined, notice all the quotes are to do with collage’s ability to challenge perception.
-Collage removes our systems of reference, disorients us within our memories (André Breton)
-Collage disrupts the accepted order of reality (Elza Adamowicz)
-Collage, through the act of cutting, becomes synonymous with taking stand, an intervention that is both formal and political (Márcia Arbex-Enrico)
It’s always a good time to take a stand, to consider what the act of disruption can yield. We can do this by making collage, and by extending the concept of collage into mundane daily practices. Like changing what shows up in our mailboxes.
This month I’ve been applying that idea to reorganizing bookshelves.
No, I’m not going to the local public library and causing mayhem with secret rearranging to make a political point. Although now that I type that, it would be a worthy performance art project…
I’m talking about using the principles of collage to make a physical intervention with your own books, however you store them. A subtle disruption that removes a current system of reference—even if that system is random—to see what new connections kick up. A gentle act of disorienting memories of what we think we read. A soft resistance to the reality the current order constructs.
I’m convinced that even a quick, casual encounter with books can change a person. No need to read cover to cover. A single spine might set off the synapses to create a new association, a new thought.
The formal and conceptual disorder and reorder that collage creates with paper applies just as much to books and other objects. If you’ve ever rearranged the furniture in a room, a desk drawer, a kitchen cupboard, you know what I mean.
I’m convinced the space where order and disorder overlap is magical.
Earlier this month I spent three days at an archive that is still in the process of being incorporated into a university library. I love that this library wants to make the material available before it is “ready.” I love the treasure-hunt of it all. Some items I recalled were just boxes filled with who knows what because they hadn’t been fully catalogued. The unexpected disorder let me make surprising discoveries and connections.
Before the research trip I started undoing the order of my books, reordering them, reordering them again. I’m in the midst of inhabiting a new workspace, of filling a new set of shelves, and am taking my time with it. Now, after that research experience, the task of moving has become an intentional creative practice.
I walk past the shelf, see the titles side by side in a way they haven’t been for 10 years, and I have new ideas, new memories. So much is getting jogged. Celebrated. Re-seen.
I walk past the shelf and suddenly feel called to put red, orange, and pink books together on my desk and write in front of them to experiment working in a color bath. To write red-orange-pink ideas.
After, I put them back again—but not in the exact same place. Disorder, reorder, repeat. A soft, playful challenge to reality.
N E W S
Parallel Cosmologies at Ursa Gallery in Bridgeport, CT has been extended to run through January 16, 2026. Talk about order and reorder: this show has such a thoughtful curation of wide-ranging collage work in five groups: investigating structure, dislocation, language/text, illusions, and identity.
My work appears with the language/text group. It is an act of reordering the reference system of a 1905 book, Thought Forms, into a new visual shape.
May the end of your November be full of colorful creative anarchies.
Yours,
Lesley
We often take so many things for granted that a subtle change can be enough to prompt us to consider something that might initiate a shift. Collage is the best example to follow. I might change the arrangement of my books.😉