CULTURAL JUXTOPOSITION
Mixed Media Collage Series
In an attempt to combine differing cultures and histories into a new form of shared or global culture, these collages juxtapose imagery that explores the progress of mankind. While we all celebrate the differences in who we are and where we're from, there is often a loss in a greater identity when we divide and categorize our populations. We are all citizens of Earth and are gifted with one shared Reality. This collage series is an exercise in representing our universal and globalized society and how we are ultimately related in our shared and separate sub-realities.
JOURNEY
Our body to our mind is a captive traveler. We find a particular affinity for the places that we live in and spiritual selves are often oriented to them like a compass is to the earth. People find holy places in community centers, nature and within ourselves, but they all follow a structure of space. The journey to this enlivened place, the place that gives you joy, is an old tale that archetypal heroes of many cultures adhere to. That path created by following this spirit becomes a path for others to use, and the spiritually enlightened are the guides.
This collage is a tribute to the journey of beings like Saint Issa who found a home in every place he went, who travelled continents in pure dedication of life and God, and who inevitably returned home to share his new wealth of knowledge.
Cultural Amalgam: St Issa's Journey, 2022. Printed media collage, 9.75"x 8".
LOCATION
But what of the place? Are we not products of the time and place we are born? Do people trace the journey of Muhammad, Jesus or Buddha to praise the earth that was stood on by someone enlightened, or to experience it themselves? There is an unspoken connection that one could find with a place, one that goes beyond description. Do we long for these places, or do these places draw us to them? Does a hometown bring a warm inviting embrace or does it just compel our own emotions, reverberating back to us?
We live in a plane existence, but existence is multidirectional not linear. Gravity gives us a physical world of three dimensions but the mind operates in place with time. Time and Space are inevitably linked; as we experience time, it is often through a lens of the place and perspective we have. Some people manage to walk on the surface of time in a way that treats all places as one. Whether through science or faith, we are drawn to the discovery of new places as much as the familiar places of home because they expand our sense of self by realizing it in a sharable experience through a location.
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