Collage Story Boxes
While reorganizing my art collection recently, I took a closer look at three “found object”art pieces in display boxes I made over 15 years ago at an assemblage workshop. So much has changed since then. Thousands of images can now be downloaded on the internet. There is no need to bin dive in search of castaway items when you can find all kinds of odds and ends at on-line sources. And there is no shortage of containers from amazon.com deliveries! This has all proved so tempting, I have turned to artmaking—like Grandma Moses— in my seventies in a series of Collage Story Boxes.
My small scale. three-dimensional, mixed media offerings draw on a variety of influences from historical dioramas and pop-up cards to model stage sets and folk art retablos. Working with a reinforced cardboard container, I build up visual layers with cut-out images gleaned from on-line photos glued on cardboard like "flats" added by a theater designer to a miniature mock-up stage set. Small objects often find their place on levels like accessories in a dollhouse. There is the occasional text taken from newspapers, books, and magazines, but I mostly hold to the adage about an image equalling a thousand words.
Checking out dozes of contemporary dioramas on line, I found most of them to be a bit kitschy and uninspired. I have no particular interest in glorifying an idealized past, celebrating home and hearth, or delighting you with clever cut-outs. Call me a grumpy old man, if you like, but I’ve reached a time in life when I need an outlet to share simple home truths in a novel visual way about what I consider to be the self-absorbed life we lead and the vital issues we ignore. So, if you are a bit squeamish about disturbing images or strongly object to mixing “politics” with sacred art, these unedited reflections confined in cardboard are not for you.
Cardboard is considered an unstable art ground with a high acid content that easily warps, absorbs moisture, and degrades over time. Inkjet prints ultimately fade. In an age of Ephemeral Art when an artistic “expression” may be a one time event or intentionally made as a perishable piece, the shelf-life of my collage story boxes does not greatly concern me once I have made my visual point. In fact, it would be a blessing, if message art pieces of this kind became irrelevent and human beings finally learned to treat one another and the world they live in with the God-given respect they deserve.
My first collage story box in fifteen years, Ukrainian Pieta, is devoted to a theme close to my heart, the tragic human cost of Ukraine's struggle against Russian invaders. Inspiration came from a sticker of "Saint Javelin" from a Ukrainian shop with a paradoxical image of a Byzantine holy woman craddling a Javelin anti-tank weapon like a child in arms. I paired four icons from Ukrainian Greek Catholic women in my collection, depicting a distraught Virgin Mary holding the lifeless body of Christ, with press photos of Ukrainian women grieving for family members slain in the war. A carved wood pendant crucifix lies face up before a final picture of parents mourning a child killed in a Russian missile attack. The Mother of Christ in a 11th century mosaic in Kyiv's St. Sophia Cathedral presides over the scene with arms raised in a prayer of protection for the Ukrainian people.
I ventured into politics with my second box, "My Name is Legion," comparing the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, when Donald Trump stirred up an angry crowd of his followers to "Save Americe" and overturn the election results, with a very different "mob" scene in the Bible. The title, “My Name is Legion,” comes from the fifth chapter of Mark’s Gospel where Jesus exorcises a demon-possessed man by sending this self-identified evil force within him into a hapless herd of swine that drowns in a frenzied dash into the Sea of Galilee. It’s a disturbing story, and I added a touch of levity by incorporating Beppa Pig Family figures and a caricature from Brian Whelan, but the wood engraving of Christ with the healed demoniac from Illustrator Fritz Eichenberg (with a JESUS SAVES sticker!) makes my all too serious point: Don’t put your faith in Fake Saviors who are out to exploit you. Find the real one.