Dark Days
Throughout 2017 I collected images from stories that populated my social media feeds, and weaving them into a series of prints collectively titled “Dark Days”, a record of a particularly tumultuous year. Each print represents a single month from that year. An Ariana Grande fan’s fuzzy bunny ears are a memento of a terrorist attack at a concert in London in May and float among medicinal herbs as the United States debated the repeal of the ACA. In August, portraits of protestors flank a can of water produced for hurricane victims, underneath sits a car used to drive through a crowd of people, resulting in the death of a bystander. November features portraits of Charles Manson and David Cassidy who died within three days of each other, an experimental rocket used in an unsuccessful attempt to prove that the world is flat, and the jerseys of three college basketball players arrested in China for shoplifting.
These compositions reflect a fractured modern space, where world altering events are not afforded more than a few moments before the feed is refreshed and another story begins to trend. As contested spaces these images compete for their place in history, ultimately having their impact written and rewritten as the pace of each new story replaces the last. They are reminders the past is equal parts remembered and forgotten, and that monuments and museums are perhaps better viewed as representations of their makers than as static moments of history.
Each print is 19"x15" and a combination of linocut and screenprinting. Research began in 2017 and the prints were produced off and on until the project was completed in summer 2019.
These compositions reflect a fractured modern space, where world altering events are not afforded more than a few moments before the feed is refreshed and another story begins to trend. As contested spaces these images compete for their place in history, ultimately having their impact written and rewritten as the pace of each new story replaces the last. They are reminders the past is equal parts remembered and forgotten, and that monuments and museums are perhaps better viewed as representations of their makers than as static moments of history.
Each print is 19"x15" and a combination of linocut and screenprinting. Research began in 2017 and the prints were produced off and on until the project was completed in summer 2019.
Process
Each month of 2017 I collected "images" from news stories that appeared in my Facebook newsfeed. This feature aggregated 10 trending news items and placed them on the right hand side of the main page. This feature was discontinued in 2018. Each month I logged notes in my sketchbook and considered how I would represent each story with an object. Not every story was used, not every object was depicted. Additionally each print has a jumble of letters in the background that spell a word or phrase related to that month.
The prints were made with a key layer cut from a piece of linoleum and the colors were added using screenprinting.
Each month of 2017 I collected "images" from news stories that appeared in my Facebook newsfeed. This feature aggregated 10 trending news items and placed them on the right hand side of the main page. This feature was discontinued in 2018. Each month I logged notes in my sketchbook and considered how I would represent each story with an object. Not every story was used, not every object was depicted. Additionally each print has a jumble of letters in the background that spell a word or phrase related to that month.
The prints were made with a key layer cut from a piece of linoleum and the colors were added using screenprinting.
Related Works
These pieces were produced before the series "Dark Days" but were influential to the final series. In this time I was collecting and drawing images from my visits to museums and combining those pictures with drawing of debris and litter found along my walks. The upended compositions allowed the images to be tossed around and turned haphazardly, derailing any sense of hierarchy.
The print "Dark Days Overture" came at the end of 2016 and is the most directly related to the final "Dark Days" series.
These pieces were produced before the series "Dark Days" but were influential to the final series. In this time I was collecting and drawing images from my visits to museums and combining those pictures with drawing of debris and litter found along my walks. The upended compositions allowed the images to be tossed around and turned haphazardly, derailing any sense of hierarchy.
The print "Dark Days Overture" came at the end of 2016 and is the most directly related to the final "Dark Days" series.
