One of a series of collages made collectively, with the intent to elicit a similar experience of gazing through reflection-rich puddles. The fractured and rippling forms of organic and curved edges reveal multi-faceted images of texture and form.
Some parts feel familiar, but are encumbered by layers of overlapping paper, both hiding and exposing images more like dreams or mind-scapes than literal puddles.
The puddle symbol can imply looking into reflections of light that sit over top our material and earth-based reality. Sometimes the puddles reveal the surface and texture underneath, other times they are dominated by an illusory sky, active environment, or your own reflected silhouette. Most often it reveals a combination, the puddle can be an ambiguous object with depths that shift and alter depending on perspective.
The puddle also explores themes of science, and references the primordial pool of evolution. By studying the past we reveal more about our existence, and the way we are going. The pool becomes an access point to discovery, whether it be subconsciously or spiritually like the ancient did as they gazed within the swirling waters, or be it in the study of the construction of amino acids and DNA within the boiling waters of the primordial ooze.
Puddle III: Skyplace, 2017. Vandyke Brown Collage. (9"x 9")
The perimeters of pushing edges give way to potential possibilities within the sky. The solar eclipse is itself eclipsed by organic and meandering forms of earthly browns. Spindly branches seem to suggest a direction up, but only segments of the collage seem stable.
Inspired by the sublime and ineffable intensity that nature can present itself, this collage presents imagery of a suggested environment. The individual is always dependent on it's environment, yet our surroundings often go unnoticed. Only when you see the skies from a strange new perspective like within the reflections of a puddle on a mute, dark road, do the colors and forms of the clouds appear so close and tangible.
Like portals into an new perspective that can transcend a single point of view, the overlapping images of a puddle can reveals worlds apart and fuse them into one strange and varied environment.