How We View the World: A Meditation on Perception

In September 2013 I agreed to create a piece of original artwork for a friend. I started by having a conversation with him about what he likes in art and in the world. With his answers, I began the 14-month-long quest of gathering images and working on the composition. During that time I experienced an incredible loss that resulted in the creation of another collage, and I experienced a traumatic event. (I will expand on that event in my next post.) 

Incorporating my friend's favorite colors, flora, and fauna was simple. The challenge with this piece involved working with my friend's preference for symmetry. I almost always gravitate toward asymmetry. The longest part of my quest was figuring out what the framework, what the vessel, of this piece would be. I went through many phases early on in the project where I had an idea of the framework, searched for examples of it, only to discover that the idea was going nowhere. It wasn't until I was in my usual coffee beanery buying my month's supply of ground coffee and browsing through the latest issue of Artforum that I found my framework: the stained glass windows created by New York City-based artist Christopher Wool for a church in La Charité-sur-Loire, France. I loved the juxtaposition of his contemporary style nestled in centuries-old architecture. I loved the intricacy of his work. I loved that I would be able to have elements of both symmetry and asymmetry. With that piece of the puzzle in place, a deluge of ideas came gushing forth. I worked on this piece intermittently over the next 11 months until its completion on the 4th of November 2014:

How We View the World

"How We View the World" is made up of magazine clippings and original photographs. I lifted the image of the window from Artforum. Using an x-acto knife, I carefully carved out most of the white spaces of the original image. Next, I placed all of the background images onto a piece of craft paper with the window image clamped to it so that I could flip up the window image and look only at the layer of background images and arrange them as needed before gluing them to the craft paper. When the background images were in place, I removed some of the black lines of Christopher Wool's creation because I didn't want the images to be cluttered by so many lines. Then when everything was situated and cut to my liking, I adhered the top window image to the layer with the background images. It was a long process that required patience and a steady hand. 

The title was the last aspect to fall into place. As the piece started to take shape, I started thinking about how each of us views things differently, even when looking at the same thing. Some focus more on what they like, others focus more on what they dislike, but in the end, perception is everything. A large part of that lies in how and what we choose to see. It exists in the same realm as the quote by Charles R. Swindoll, "Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it." Changing the way we react to life can be achieved by changing the way we view the world around us. "How We View the World" is my interpretation of my friend's vision of the world. Another collage in the same vein for someone else would look drastically different. How would yours look? 

Learn more about Christopher Wool's project
Featured in this post: How We View the World 
All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.