I was at The Space a few weeks ago when we were decorating an area of the place using old recycled CDs and DVDs. I saw that they had some leftover comic books from that recent Free Comic Book Day event on May 4 (which was also Star Wars Day) so I had the idea of doing a superhero collage. I chose Spider-Man because he’s a throwback to my childhood. I used to watch the original cartoon series when I was a child and I still remember that theme song.

Spider-Man also helped me when it came to entering school. Here’s some background. I was born with two birth defects. One was a dislocated left hip, which resulted in me having to wear a body cast when I was very young. (Years later I ended up getting a hip replacement on that same left hip.) The other was that I had too much fluid in my head and it needed to be drained because it would’ve come to the point where my brain wouldn’t be able to develop and grow big because of the fluid. So I underwent surgery as an infant where the excess fluid was drained. The doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital thought that I still was brain damaged despite the surgery and they were divided on whether I should even be going to a regular public school or not. To this day I remember a woman from the Anne Arundel County public school system visiting my parents’ home where she observed me. I drew a picture of Spider-Man because I was such a big fan of the cartoon series. She took my picture with her when she left our house. Soon afterwards the school system felt that I could handle going to school. So basically Spider-Man saved me from a less-certain educational future and I ended up with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland at College Park.

So getting back to my project, I saw that The Space had a pile of leftover issues of comic books based on Spider-Man that was called Spidey and His Amazing Friends. Apparently this is a comic book that is based on a series on Disney Jr. that is aimed at young children.

First I took a piece of red construction paper and cut out a red circle. Then I glued it on a disc. Then I took a spider rubber stamp with black ink and I stamped it on the red circle. I traced that stamp over with black ink. Then I cut out pictures of Spider-Man and his friends and glued them on the red circle. Here is what the finished project looked like.

The other people who were at The Space were really thrilled with what I had done. They hung my piece along with the other discs that had art on them.

Here is what the entire project looks like.

It’s kind of cool to see my collage work displayed with other people’s work.