I went to Bennington Farmer’s Market today to buy a collage notecard for my granddaughter Robin from Emily Gold, a Vermont artist who has started offering virtual collage classes online.

Her recent students are people who want to learn collage and teachers looking for fresh and original kinds of art for their returning students. These collages are a lot of fun.

Bishop Maginn High School can’t use materials immediately because of the pandemic but hopes to be allowed to use them in October. My idea is for Emily to teach Sue about collage and Sue will figure out what the students will need.

Sue, like teachers everywhere, is looking for new things to help stimulate her students as they return to school after a long interruption.

I love Emily’s collage and artwork – I brought “Little Women” for Robin’s card. Emily is also a baker, she makes pastries, cookies, cakes, and scones. This seems a perfect fit to me.

I’ve seen some of the refugee artwork in Sue’s class, many of these kids learned to work with paper art in the refugee camps where they spent much of their lives.

Emily’s art centers right now on using collage – disparate papers with colored pencils, crayons, and pastels to make images in colors and texture.  She has a young daughter who’s been out of school since March with no end in sight.

She also makes beautiful paper books, work she shows in museums and libraries. She told me about the teachers – and a famous Vermont author – who have taken her class, and a bulb went off in my head.

You can contact Emily here.

This would be perfect for the Army of Good and Bishop Maginn.

We’ll pay the fee, which is modest, and also pay for the materials Sue Silverstein will need for her art class. She didn’t want to charge at all, but I told her we don’t work that way.

I have the feeling this is the perfect thing for Sue’s Bishop Maginn art class to be studying right now, Emily’s collages are bright, colorful, and full of joy and laughter.

She keeps a bowl of paper eyeballs in her kitchen.

She also sends students and teachers a recording of the class so they can refer back to it.

These two very artistic people will talk to each other and work it out. The Army Of Goodwill take it from there. I think any student of Sue Silverstein is fortunate. I have the same feeling about Emily.