Collaging Under the Influence of Life

Collaging Under the Influence of Life

6 Week Class | Registration opens 2026-07-02 12:00 PM

Adult: Beginner to Intermediate
2026-09-23-2026-10-28
10:00 AM-1:00 PM on Wed
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$352.00 CAD

Collaging Under the Influence of Life

6 Week Class | Registration opens 2026-07-02 12:00 PM

In an increasingly digital world—where images can be created with a simple prompt—this workshop brings the focus back to the process of making something on our own, experimenting with different materials for capturing moments from our lives on paper. With curiosity as our guide, we open ourselves to visual storytelling - allowing chance, movement, and materials to shape the work.

Instead of striving for perfect results, we'll explore various modes of art making, such as sketching, writing, drawing, printing, and stamping with this playful approach. Everyday items such as newspaper clippings, old tickets, shopping lists, pressed leaves and petals, receipts, and other collected remnants will be incorporated into your work; these mementos can spark our visual memories, emotions, dreams, and ideas. Resulting artwork from the class can take many forms: storyboards, visual diaries, memorabilia-collages, drawings, or paintings. Accidents are welcome -– and perhaps celebrated - as joyful discoveries.

In flow with the needs of each individual and the group, the class includes some demos for techniques and materials, and personal guidance throughout. We exchange reflections with kindness and curiosity throughout the workshop. At the end of each session, we share our experiences, brainstorm about ideas, and celebrate each other’s artworks.

Base Tuition: $342.00 + Material Fee: $10 = $352.00 Total
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  • What You Will Learn:
    - How to loosen control and embrace chance in drawing and mark-making.
    - Techniques for visual storytelling through everyday materials.
    - Ways to translate lived moments into poetic visual traces.
    - How to allow your art practice to be process-based and highly personal.
  • Materials List: 
    - Pens and pencils
    - Fountain pens
    - Ink
    - Watercolour
    - Ink pads
    - Graphite
    - Charcoal
    - Glue sticks
    - Threads or string
    - Sketchbooks or pads of different sizes
    - Some Mixed Media paper 14” x 17” or bigger
    - Scissors or an X-acto knife
    - Paint brushes in various sizes

    Feel free to bring any other materials you enjoy working with.


Häussler, Iris
Iris Häussler

Iris studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany and immigrated to Canada in 2001.Iris Häussler has explored many ways to offer art experiences at the fringe or outside the White Cube. She is interested in creating inclusive art environments open to everybody, rather than catering to the art market only. This has a long history: she created her very first site specific art-installation for a group exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1988, choosing the women’s toilets of all places. Since then, she has exhibited in basements, trailers, garages, coach houses, apartments, churches, chapels, stores, hotel-rooms, industrial buildings and historic houses as well as in international museums, galleries and Biennials.


Häussler’s work is found in international collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Städtische Sammlung im Lenbachhaus, Munich and the Goetz Collection, Munich, Germany. She also held a guest professorship at the Academy of Fine Art in Munich in 1999 and has given talks about her work in universities and art institutions in Canada, the USA, and Europe. Her work received awards and grants including the Karl-Hofer Prize (Berlin), the Kunstfonds Fellowship (Bonn), the Toronto Arts Council, the Chalmers Arts Foundation, the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.