Resilience is art that celebrates the environment. It was created for the 20th Annual Environmental Art Show at Standing Rock Cultural Arts in Kent, OH. Fred presented poems from his chapbook, Gospel of the Flowers, including O Great Mother and My Triumphant Return from the Virtual. Let's let Fred tell you more about the artwork:
"This digital collage started with photos of Calla lilies, to which I added birds, frogs and butterflies. I call this the base layer. As I work I"m thinking about color and the position of items in the visual space.
"Next I looked for a constrasting image - something with very different colors. I was thinking about land vs. sea and thought the reds and yellows in the base layer would contrast well with a picture of the ocean. I looked for photos of waves and found one that I thought might work.
"While working on a collage, I try hard to be respectful of the original images. I use my own photos whenever possible but collage, as an art form, is about borrowing images and recombining them to create something new. When I borrow a photo, I crop it carefully to the object I'm seeking to collage in, then I alter the dimension, color and orientation of the image to differentiate it from the original.
"In the end, collage is about creating line and shape out of diverse objects. In this case, I used a masking technique to allow the base layer to come through in concentric waves. I like to saturate the color before printing because print color space is smaller than video color space. It's the difference between reflective color and projective color.
"I was very pleased with the color contrasts. You can see the foam patterns in the ocean wave, interspersed with a beautiful rainforest panorama. I printed the image to canvas fabric and mounted the canvas on a curved board, creating extra dimension for the viewer."
Resilience is about how we stand up to climate catastrophe and how we learn to cooperate for mutual benefit. It's a call to action to preserve the natural world and keep our oceans pollution-free. Here's the original image:"
Resilience by Fred Pierre (2020)
