By Cora Secore

On Thursday, October 15th, I went to The DRAW to interview the teaching artist for our Collage Sessions class: Christine Domino. She’s a lively, soulful woman with a deep passion for collage and spiritual health. I found myself in yet another enlightening conversation where a new perspective showed me an artistic angle I had never known before. She’s someone who pays attention to the significance of every individual while keeping up her sense of humor and whimsy.

“I’m semi-retired,” Christine said as she introduced herself to me, “I’m teaching Collage Sessions every Thursday afternoon here at The DRAW. I also attend the Tuesday night Art Practice & Conversation [classes] which I love. I’ve taken other workshops here and in other places. Anywhere where I can do collage and play with paper, I’m there. I live alone in Kingston with my cat Jax, who’s a real lovebug. My dad and brother lived in Woodstock, and my brother went to Saugerties High School. I grew up in Brooklyn (hence the Brooklyn accent).

“I’m actually more active here than when I lived in Queens, where I was more isolated. My neighbors were never in my apartment, I never saw them. Here, I see my neighbors all the time. I have all of these different places to go to and do things. I’m more involved in the community, which is what I like. What got me involved in the collage workshops is that I told Lara Giordano ‘I really like what’s happening, and I really want to do collage.’ I wanted a space and community to do collage because I really like working with people rather than just on my own. That’s how that started.”

I wanted to clarify when Christine’s interest in collage began. She told me, “When I was five years old, my mother enrolled me in a monthly bookclub, and it was Ezra Jack Keats book,The Snowy Day, that roused my love of collage. The Snowy Day was about a child who brought home a snowball and thought he could keep it overnight only to wake up in the morning to find out that it had melted. I didn’t know until recently when I looked up Ezra Jack Keats, it was the first time in a children’s book that they had a child of color playing with a caucasian child, and it was not intentional, but it was very progressive at the time and some people were even up in arms about it. It opened the doors to ‘kids are just kids, and they’re playing’ and that’s kind of the thing with art and community. People, playing. Doesn’t matter how old you are or what your background is or what your pronouns are, we’re just making art and playing.”

I asked Christine what she likes about collage, a medium that has clearly meant so much to her for so long. “Firstly, that it is accessible to anyone, you don’t need a Bachelors in Fine Arts and that it is a portable medium. If you can tear or cut paper and use a glue stick, you can do collage. You can work in an art pad, journal, or create an altered book and store images in a folder or ziplock bag,” Christine explained, “I was also a massage therapist for about 12-15 years, so I’m a very tactile person. I love the textures, paper , and colors that create a visual language. Including ephemera, incorporates memories from my daily life that blend in personal meaning. Nobody else may know my intention, yet it may evoke emotion in them. Of course it’s evolving for me and I learn different techniques and share them in our collage sessions.”

Since Christine is a teacher here, I got to ask about what teaching her class is really like for her. In her answer, I got to hear just how many possibilities there really were to the art of collage. “I’m having a lot of fun,” Christine said, “This coming session will be the seventh one that I am facilitating. I can’t believe it was only last September when I asked if I could try this out. It’s nice to have a couple of core people who are ‘repeat offenders’ so to speak, and new people cycle in so I meet a lot of new people in the area. Because it’s daytime we get more retired folks and parents with their kids in school. It’s what I wanted and more, to be in a community with people and create. And I’m guiding, it’s not quite like I’m teaching and going, ‘you do step A B and C.’ Each week I share a different technique or prompt, sharing examples of monochromatic work, using strips of paper like they are creating a quilt, use of templates, creating background papers, gel print, image transfer, use of mark making and stencils or stamps.

“One thing I like to do is work with templates, shapes of women, moons, stars and trees are some favorites and then collage onto that shape, or I create a background page and cut out the template shape from there. Sometimes as a group we will decide to work on one technique together. We tried our hand at image transfers and gel printing last session and we had a blast. I shared Joomchi paper that I made at a workshop I took at The DRAW and we decided that during this next round we are going to spend an afternoon making Joomchi paper.

I brought up how Christine is an art educator who has been educated by other artists by this very program as a full-circle moment, which inspired Christine to tell the story of how she came by The DRAW. “I met Marialena Ferrer-Harrington. She’s the Executive Director of Unison Arts. I think it was at the Celebration of the Arts at the Kingston center for SUNY Ulster a couple years back, she did a workshop on mask-making. I asked if she was going to teach this again and she said” I don’t know yet, maybe.” A bunch of other people were interested so I asked if I could get a sign-up sheet started. With that sign-up sheet, she ended up doing a workshop here at The DRAW for several days and I attended that. That was my introduction to The DRAW’

“I also want to bring up that I don’t think enough people know about The DRAW! I’ll bring it up and get back: ‘Who are they? What is that? Where are they?’ I tell them: ‘They’re a great community center, you have to get involved! They have a gallery, they have internships for high school students!’ And it’s diverse and I like that. In art, there are no boundaries. It’s a visual language, sometimes for things we don’t have words for. I find that very healing.”

Christine then began to go into more detail about what inspires her work and the spiritual rhythm she follows. She was the first art educator I interviewed that was so spiritually involved, and her inclination towards the tactile sets her up to connect those goals to physical touch. “Personally, I like to work around the Celtic wheel of the year with different cycles, equinoxes and solstices,” She explained, “I’m kind of honoring the rhythm of life, and in my life, and in all of our lives. I’m bringing it all together like that. It happens organically, it’s not always plotted out.

“I work with collage/mixed media, because I do incorporate paint. I sew, I play with watercolors, I do bead work. I make meditation beads that I call soma beads. They’re tactile and visual with different textures and focal beads, kind of like when someone uses a rosary or mala beads. I leave them open-ended, with different things like a tree on one end and a quartz crystal on the other and all different beads in-between. They make me feel calm, and they bring me into the moment just by feeling the different textures and looking at the colors. I also make beaded jewelry. Whatever I can get my hands on. I’m starting to break out into little book-binding things, making journals by hand, and maybe more assemblage is coming since I’m starting to go more into 3D. I also mix essential oils, kinda witchy stuff! [Christine laughs]

“I’m also trained as soulcollage facilitator. That’s where you make your own oracle deck using collage on 5” x 8” cards. An art therapist from California, named Seena Frost created this technique. She’s since passed. There is a committee suit, like different aspects of who you are. Like the devil, the teacher, the mother, the seductress, the protestor. Then a suit for people in your life who have influenced you, the community suit , and the companion suit which is animal totems. Just like I do with collage and mixed media, I work organically, letting it unfold. I don’t know what’s coming up until I make it and go ‘Oh, that’s what that represents.’”

I asked Christine if she had teaching experience before this, to which she said, “Yes and no. I taught soulcollage workshops at different public places and homes. As a massage therapist when I had my practice, I would teach essential oils and chakra workshops. I’m also trained as a crystal healer and in reiki energy work. I would hold workshops on all of those things. But as far as art goes, it was really just the soulcollage. I was in my own little world where I’d invite people over, they’d come over, and we’d set everything up and we’d do a workshop. This is the first formal teaching artist position that I’ve had.”

I asked Christine what her personal definition of an artist is, which she answered quickly and cleanly. “Oh, just creative expression,” She told me, “Expressing through a medium. Your inner landscape is expressed through some medium, and that’s all it is! I don’t think it has to be [determined by] size, or acceptance by certain people, or a seal of approval. It’s just expressing your thoughts and emotions through a medium that can be shared.”

I got Christine to then share her favorite part of teaching, which she described as: “Seeing the light come on in someone’s eyes.” She’d go on to elaborate, “Or they’re happy with an idea they got. You see a light come on in their eyes. Or just sharing it, being in community with it. Something’s come alive, something’s sparked. That’s fun to connect in that way, no verbal communication needed.”

I had a great time learning from Christine and her perspective on art and spiritual health, especially as an art educator unlike any other here. She can be found on Instagram @christinescreations88 and also has a fairly new website at christinedomino.carrd.co. So keep up for more from Christine! You can also sign up for the Collage Sessions workshops on mkad.art/the-draw/.