Puzzling Pictures: Creativity, Coping, and Collaging in the LGBTQ+ Community
Updated: 3 days ago
Meet Ray Mathew-Santhosham, MSW, LSW— author, creator, and collage artist. Ray partnered with WAV to lead Puzzling Pictures: Creativity, Coping, and Collaging in the LGBTQ+ Community, a workshop series that uses collage-making as a creative, trauma-informed practice to support personal and collective healing.
The ideas behind Puzzling Pictures don’t have to stay in the workshop. This blog shares resources and inspiration for bringing creative coping practices into your own life or gathering with friends—starting with Ray sharing more about the workshop and the ideas behind it.
Ray shares an idea that deeply resonates with WAV’s mission: creating art can help us rewrite the narratives that have hurt us and continue forward with a new narrative of our own.
"Art doesn't have to be something for others, it can be for your own sake. It can be for your own healing."
Lessons from Puzzling Pictures
Third spaces matter.
For queer people, and for everyone, having spaces to gather creates the opportunity to slow down, have meaningful conversations, and build connections with others in the community in a deeper way.
We are complex, and art can hold that complexity.
Collage gives us a way to take thoughts, feelings, experiences, and pieces that may seem disconnected and bring them together into something new. Collage can help us build our narrative, put chaotic thoughts together, and make us feel like "I can have contradicting truths in the same space."
Creating art in community is especially powerful.
Making art on your own can be meaningful, but something different happens when people create together. During Puzzling Pictures, participants searched for magazine clippings together, laughed, listened, nodded in recognition, and shared the stories behind what they created.
Having someone else listen to your story, and recognize something of themselves in it, can be validating. It can affirm that your experiences are real, your story matters, and you aren't alone in it.
Bring Puzzling Pictures Into Your Own Community
What happens in spaces like Puzzling Pictures can extend into friend groups, chosen families, and other queer spaces. Creating together gives us a chance to be vulnerable, tell our stories, and make sure more people feel heard and know there is a place for them.
The zine below, created by Ray, offers research, ideas, and resources to help you gather some friends, start creating, and make space for each other.
More From Ray
For Ray, the partnership with WAV was a natural fit, rooted in a shared belief in art as a tool for connection and healing:
"I'm so so happy that I got connected with WAV. I feel like this organization, their values, and their entire mission aligns with what I'm passionate about. About using art as a way to connect with each other and to heal with each other. Making it not about the product, more about the process."
That focus on the creative process also shaped the space participants were invited into during Puzzling Pictures:
"WAV has this presence of allowing people to experience the process as they want to experience it. And just holding space for that. Which I think is really unique, and I don't see a lot of spaces like that solely dedicated to that purpose."
Hear the Full Conversation
Want to hear more? Watch the full conversation with Ray to learn more about Puzzling Pictures, the ideas behind the workshop, and the power of creativity in the LGBTQ+ community.
