Our cover for this issue was designed by its guest editor, writer and collage artist Diane Schoemperlen. In writing to Diane to commission a cover design, Kim let slip my comment that imagining her workspace was giving me a mild panic attack: I am, um, not a fan of clutter, so the idea of a table covered in tiny bits of paper and gobs of glue is my worst nightmare so far as workspaces go. Further, I only enjoy collage art that has a kind of ‘clean’ aesthetic—- like these ones by Robi Walters and Leanne Wright, which I discovered in Border Crossings, for example. When I make it big, I’m gonna get me one of these.) All the tiny pieces must fit into a very strong, unified whole or else, more panic attacks. Anyway. Thankfully, though Diane’s workspace sounds as chaotic as I imagined, her cover collage is quite the opposite! More than fits my rather obsessive need for visual order. Here’s how she made it happen:

In planning the design for the cover, I tried to figure out how best to represent lists in general in a visual way. Because I am very fond of squares and grids (which, thanks to Umberto Eco, I now realize are visual lists), that was my first idea for the overall arrangement. The colour I chose for the background is my favourite colour, so that was easy enough. Those decisions made, the next step was a lot of math and measuring to figure out how many squares I could fit on the cover, while still making each square large enough to contain a number, a printed list, and a small illustration. Much as collage might at first glance appear to be a form of visual clutter, in fact, my collages turn out being quite orderly clutter in the end. As you can see, I like things to be tidy. I like verticals to be straight up and down and horizontals to be level. About the farthest I can comfortably go beyond that is to occasionally put images on an angle.

The most challenging part of the process was then deciding what list to put in each box and how to illustrate it. Some of these decisions were determined by what I had on hand. I’ve been collecting materials for collage for many years, since publishing my book Forms of Devotion: Stories and Pictures back in 1998. The images in that book came from a series of copyright-free volumes of images published by Dover Publications in New York. These books have come in very handy for this new work. I have also gathered up many miscellaneous old books as well as stickers, stamps (both postage and rubber), maps, and professionally-made collage sheets that can be ordered from various sources on the Internet. I have yet to come up with a good organizational system for all this stuff, so usually what takes the longest in putting together a collage is finding the right illustrations from the sources I’ve amassed over the years.

In this case, I wanted to include lists of both a personal and an impersonal nature. Boxes 2, 3, 4, and 9 are of personal significance to me, while the remaining 8 boxes are impersonal. How to arrange the 12 boxes was determined by how they balanced out visually, according to the look of the text and the colour of the illustrations. The numbers in each box are done with a set of rubber stamps, using different colours of ink. The entire process of putting my collages together is done by the old-fashioned cut-and-paste method. I don’t use PhotoShop or anything like that. The computer is important in the process though, as I use my scanner to copy anything that I want to preserve in its original state, and also to resize anything that is either too big or too small for the spot in which I want to place it. It also allows me to reproduce anything on a transparency when I want to use that for a special effect.

And last but not least, here’s a special bonus for her fellow lovers of lists out there: a key to the lists Diane uses in her cover collage complete with pics of the full-size version of each one (just click on the thumbnail-sized ones below to bring up the full-size). Enjoy!

1. From “Questions on Chapter IX: Miscellaneous Injuries” in FIRST AID TO THE INJURED: THE AUTHORISED TEXTBOOK OF THE ST. JOHN AMBULANCE ASSOCIATION (1917, 1928.)

2. List of ingredients in my mother’s recipe for “Chicken Cacciatore” (c. 1970.)

3. List of clothing and other articles not permitted to be worn orbrought by  inmates to the Visiting Room at Bath Institution, Kingston, Ontario; from “Visits: Rules & Regulations: Bath Institution” (2009.)

4.  List of my son’s immunizations from 1985 to 1998; from KFLA Health Unit.

5.  From “Supplementary Vocabulary Words: Grade Five” in THE CANADIAN SPELLER: BOOK ONE by Frank M. Quance, authorized by the Minister of Education for Ontario (Toronto: W. J. Gage & Co., 1945.)

6.   From “An Alphabetical List of Common Cultivated Plants” in HIGH SCHOOL BOTANY, PART II: THE COMMONLY OCCURRING WILD PLANTS OF CANADA: A FLORA FOR THE USE OF BEGINNERS by H. B. Spotton (Toronto: W. J. Gage & Co., 1897.)

7. From “Equipment of a Warden’s Post” in AIR RAID WARDENS’ HANDBOOK, Province of Ontario Civilian Defence Committee (Ottawa: Edmond Cloutier, Printer to the King’s most Excellent Majesty, 1942.)

8. List of parts of the “Bird Digestive System,” dated April 8, 1941, author unknown.

9. List of food likes and dislikes from “Chapter 8: Eating” in IN THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE: A NOVEL IN 100 CHAPTERS by Diane Schoemperlen (Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 1994.)

10. List of the “begats” in The Gospel According to Matthew, Chapter 1, THE HOLY BIBLE, Authorized King James Version.

11. List of “Irish heroes and heroines of antiquity” in ULYSSES by James Joyce (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1968.)

12. From “Other Common Pests” in INSECTS: A GUIDE TO FAMILIAR AMERICAN INSECTS by Herbert S. Zim and Clarence Cottam (New York:  Golden Press, 1951.)

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