Collage as Therapeutic Care: The Emergence of the Kanyer Art Collection | Interview with Laurie Kanyer
A Tour, 2020, 16 x 24 inches, Collage
Space On Space: What sparked your interest in becoming a counselor?
Laurie Kanyer: I was in junior high school when I decided to become a counselor. I was the kid who all the other kids shared their problems with, and I cherished their stories.
SOS: When did collage become a medium you use in your practice?
LK: In the mid-1980s, while on staff at a community college, my department chair asked if I would be willing to teach a high school course in child psychology. It was the same high school I had graduated from, so I jumped at the opportunity. My enthusiasm waned when I discovered that the school didn’t provide textbooks or curriculum. I quickly formed a syllabus and gathered all of the magazines I could find. My thought was that students could use collage-making to further their learnings on the topics I planned to teach. I developed a daily class format knowing the class material would touch on sensitive topics.
At the end of every class, I asked the students to reflect on the lesson. Students could choose to make a collage or write a brief reflection paper. Collage-making was preferred by the majority of students. Students began to bring magazines to contribute to the source material pile. We used collage-making to mark their learnings, process ideas, and to express emotions.
Later, I worked with pregnant and parenting adults who were experiencing poverty. They attended my group sessions three times a week, two hours each, and they participated in individual counseling sessions. Much like the high school class, each of the group sessions followed a preset format. I rotated between having the parents make a collage in response to the lesson, or I provided a guided collage-making experience related to the topic. There was time for sharing their collage if they were comfortable.
Collage-making in this setting was instrumental, because many of the women had learning difficulties, and most of their responses were kept confidential. Collage-making helps people communicate their ideas and reduce their energetic-emotional stress. It modulates the pace of hormonal energy in the brain connected to grief.
The state of Washington does an annual review of the social service initiatives they fund to gauge program effectiveness. Compared to a 2% success rate for other programs in the area, the study showed my program had a 19% success rate. While these numbers are shockingly low—there are many barriers for this demographic to obtain employment—it was clear that the program was more effective.
I’ve spent decades facilitating the use of collage-making as a tool to explore tender and potent topics related to being a human. In every case it provided a way to ease the magnitude of difficult emotions, feelings, communicating hardships, gaining cooperation with kids and adults, and more. The individuals did not have to worry about spelling and penmanship. They express their thoughts and feelings on a topic with an image rather than in writing. What people create is beautiful, eloquent, and authentic.
Come Fly With Me, 2020, 11 x 14 inches, Collage
SOS: How do you use collage-making within your own art practice?
I took up collage-making when a sudden emotional jolt occurred in my own life. I had made collage most of my life, in the form of scrapbooks. However, making a fully formed collage in response to a “small t” trauma was a new application for me. I have made hundreds of them since that time. I use collage-making now as an intentional self-care tool in my life. Eventually, I reached out to the international collage world to collaborate, and I now look for ways to amplify and magnify collage in art history.
SOS: As a collector, how do you go about choosing what goes into your collection?
LK: The mission of the Doug and Laurie Kanyer Art Collection is to document contemporary collage made from 1970 to the present for historical preservation. Acquisitions are made using a 40-point criteria. We do not disclose the criteria, as we do not want to influence how collagists make their works. Most of the collages in the collection fit into at least half of the criteria points. And naturally, we have to personally like the work.
Doug and I have been art collectors for decades. For the majority of that time, we collected work from artists in our local area. We shifted gears in 2016 and committed to collecting collage exclusively. The goal was to uplift the medium from a fine art perspective and expand it in art history. We began to buy collages internationally. After talking with collagists from all over the world, I started sharing what I knew about collage-making as a helping, healing, and transformational tool.
Perhaps because they learned I was a counselor, collagists have shared with me how and when they came to make collage. Frequently, artists turn to collage after or during a time of great life strain. Often, a measurable, challenging experience occurred in their life, and they took to cutting or tearing magazines, and then gluing paper to paper. Some were established fine artists who had attended art school. Others were serious hobbyists, who found they had some talent and ended up making collage as a vocation, rather than simply for fun. What they had in common was turning to collage-making during a measurable crisis or serious life event. To confirm this observation, I conducted a study where I asked participants, “Was there a person, place, event, circumstance, or situation that caused you to begin to make collage?” Of the 80 people who participated in the study, 78 reported that a significant life event ignited them to begin to make collages. Many of the people in my study say, “Collage saved my life.”
Several artists in our collection were curious about my research. One artist, Andrea Burgay, urged me to write a book. Having written books in the past I was hesitant, as book-writing is laborious and is complicated since I have dyslexia. She suggested I start by making a simple list. I did, and by the end of the day I had 55 ways collage-making helps, heals, and transforms. Later, I added another 70 points.
During the pandemic, I set out to write the book which consisted of a collection of exercise-experiences that were based on the exact format and model from my classes and individual and group counseling sessions. The collagist and painter C. P. Harrison joined the project and tested all the exercise-experiences I compiled. Harrison is not only an artist, but a counselor for the American Cancer Society. Many of his fine art collages are featured in the book.
My hope was that collagists would continue to keep using collage-making during the pandemic. I believed if they kept using collage-making they would be better off than if they did not make collages. I hoped to convince other people who found themselves in crisis due to COVID-19 to start to use collage-making. I finished the book in 2021; it’s called Collage Care, Transforming Emotions, Feelings and Life Experiences with Collage.
The collage-making process is special. It unlocks mechanisms in the brain to bring forth remarkable opportunities to transform. Collage-making is a form of visual journaling. The substrate (the sturdy paper upon which one places collage elements) becomes a safe container to hold and carry the burden of something someone is facing. The substrate is the place where feelings can reside and can significantly decrease stress. Collage-making also documents moments in someone’s life. As the collage emerges from the paper, the maker can see the work they’ve done internally. It does so in a confidential way. Only the maker knows what the symbolic collage-making elements mean.
Using collage-making invites one to be in the present moment, grounded in the here and now. It prevents rumination and anxious worry. Collage-making can be a conscious, mindful practice. With its studied searching, cutting, and pasting of paper elements, collage-making is a form of contemplation. Because one needs to be fully present and intentionally focused when making a collage, one has to be deeply aware. This attention to detail offers the mind space, reduces emotional distress, and unlocks new possibilities.
I am Here, 2022, 16 x 24 inches, Collage
Let’s Dish, 2020, 16 x 24 inches, Collage
Sometime a Bird, 2022,16 x 24 inches, Collage
Laurie Kanyer is an art collector, author, publisher, artist, and retired counselor. Laurie and her husband Doug have been art collectors since 1978. For decades, Laurie has used collage as a therapeutic intervention with her clients and students. In 2014, she founded Yakima Light Project, the first non-profit art gallery in the downtown area of Yakima, Washington. At the time, this was one of the most poverty-stricken areas in the state of Washington, with limited access to the visual arts. In 2021, she published Collage Care: Transforming Emotions and Life Experiences with Collage. Collage Care: The Method was recently published in March of 2023. The Kanyers have dedicated their collecting efforts exclusively to collage since 2016, and their collection is one of the few private art collections in the world focusing solely on collage. Laurie holds an MA in Human Development focusing on infant mental health, childhood grief, and loss, and an MA in Organizational Development from Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. She lives in the high desert region of Central Washington State.
