my friend giulia first found me on instagram. she reached out over email and we became instant friends, irl. giulia lives in milan but spent time in new york this past summer. i introduced her to some of my friends and showed her aspects of my life in new york. then last fall, i had the incredible opportunity of visiting giulia in italy. i spent time with her family and friends and she showed me aspects of her life in milan. giulia is now one of my e-galpals. we keep in touch through the interwebs and share aspects of our lives from afar.

giulia is a trend researcher and a collage maker too, so we have a lot of shared interests and passions. she also does social media for nou magazine. here, she shares about her recent collages, which you can also find here.

giulia bernardi: i like spontaneous art. i'm fascinated by images of daily life. it’s at the heart of everything i do. it's my main inspiration. i like to observe what happens around me. i like to see and watch people as way to find new ideas to understand what's going on around me. my favorite spot to do research is at the bar or coffee shop. drink a coffee and watch what happens around me.

i see my collage work as an act of research. i put all the images together and change their meaning and context. i like to tell stories with my collages. they are realistic. i don't like surrealism. life is true. my work is me, 100%. it's the only place where i'm honest and have full self-confidence. i use collage as a way to calm myself down, to help me realize what's going on in my life and to talk about my current or latest obsessions. i use collage to heal from what has hurt me. making a collage helps me fully realize and work through periods of my life.

i like images of daily life. i like to mix fashion photos with documentary photos and snapshots. i really like documentary photos. i like blurred and faded photos. i like photos taken with old cameras. i want to learn how to make good photos so i can use them in my collages but i don't have that skill right now. instead, i would like to think of myself as a collector of images. when you don't know how to make something, you have to work with what you got. i’m good at collecting images and researching things. collage allows me to use those skills and make something with it.

some of these collages are inspired by a guy i fell in love with, but he's not into to me anymore. it sounds cheesy, i know. but after a lot of tears, i was able to turn my pain into something positive. sometimes i feel like i wasted a lot of time on him, so some of the collages are inspired by that feeling. others are inspired by my experience and love for travel. ulysses and penelope are my favorites characters from when i was a child. i created scrapbook for nou magazine inspired by them, seeing penelope as a woman who doesn't wait around for ulysses at home, instead she is a woman who is out and about, experiencing the world while also trying to find herself. but, you know, more discover new things and more you don't want to bring you back your past! in some of my other collages, there isn't really a specific idea behind them. instead they are simply striking images with words that i heard in a song or read somewhere. words are really important to my collage making process. other collages are pages from scrapbooks i made during school when i was studying fashion design, showing the creative process of making a fashion collection.

i look for images on the internet and don't stop searching until i find what i want. then i print the images or scan images from magazines or books. i hate to ruin and cut images from magazines or books, even if it's the crap/worst magazine in the world. for me, printed periodicals are sacred! also i use found images and scraps collected from my travels, or from my daily life. i like objects that represent a sort of memory. i love old memories. also i used some digital elements thanks to photoshop or illustrator or indesign...it depends!