Artwork Throwback: Early Vandyke Brown Collage
Frieze of Humanity: 2014, 2014. Vandyke brown and mixed media collage. (5 1/2"x15")
During this time, I was very influenced by the eastern writing I had been reading the semester following my World Religions course. A print of a Hindu/Buddhist frieze from within the Freer Asian Art Museum in D.C. frames this collage, and in the collaged pages displays the faces of the day’s big stories. I was daunted by the swift current of world events, and as Daesh (ISIS) spread in the levant and refugee's surged the European Union, civil and economic distress, and countless world disasters seemed too much of a rush on me.
Current Events are befuddled and unexpected, yet strangely constant. Like the stone relief frieze, all the faces and spirits of humanity become a sea of events, and it becomes difficult to develop a big picture, because each event has many perspectives.
The faces blend, and go on and on, and the sheer quantity of information there is to learn, in all its changing forms, makes the individual feel insignificant.
So what would it look like to have a never ending frieze of our current events, a never ending list of names and faces? Recognizing some faces may move you or I, or infuriate us. They may momentarily feel swift, or slow time down just to look at them. Some are faces and names that we should know, and pay respect to, but there is no ending of worthy candidates. It is clear the list would never end, for humanity even in it's mundane are rather worthy of homage.
2014 seemed to show to me how unrelenting the chaos of our present is, and how chaos and change always seems to bring new shock or dismay. What happens though when we stop paying respect for the fallen, or the suffering? When we stop recording history, and talking about the important decisions in our past, do we lose anything? What is missed?
Like the frieze, history has the potential to tell innumerous stories, but willingly we can stroll by without acknowledging.
While the added images (all sourced from TIME Magazine) in the collage are representing the moments in time when it was made, I hope it feels as if it could represent the continuing cycle, even up to today and a year from now.