Weight of the World

Weight of the World

“Weight of the World” is a series of collages that reflects the current state of our world; addressing the existential threats of climate change, war, partisanship, and our impact on nature. As humans, we have had an incredible effect upon our environment, from the clearing of natural habitat to introduction and spread of invasive species. We have taken so much water from the ground that we have even changed how the earth sits upon its axis! We have colonized almost every square mile of this planet. We face a future where getting along will become increasingly difficult as our precious resources dwindle. This series is a literal reckoning of our past and present.

Each collage, featuring the earth in various states of stability, are built upon antique ledgers which employ intricately cut paper from a multitude of sources and time periods to create surreal scenes. The placement of each symbolic element is carefully considered in terms of compositional balance and response to the existing marks upon the page. Several of the larger ledgers backgrounds are painted, creating context for the collages, much like a diorama one might see in a natural history museum.

The ledgers are reckonings that serve as a historical snapshot of the mundane, such as food purchases and inventories. By working atop these ledgers, I am collaborating with people of the past and building another layer of human history, while pondering how we arrived at this point, our similarities and our differences in relation to the people that lived before us.

The hands in both the collages and installations reference work, action, discord, help, protection, and pleas for help, while the feet refer to movement, trouble, and even tantrums. Other characters include a simultaneously protective and vengeful mother Earth, her children, and birds and butterflies asking us to consider their plight while offering hope that it is not too late. The earth represented by antique illustrations and vintage globes serves as a record of history, empires, colonialization and how things have changed over time.