CUT UPS: Brotherly Love

80 x 62 in. / Collage / 2022

Collage using cuttings from handmade pulp painted paper, salvaged from earlier work, on a base of Khadi paper.

Inspired by the larger Greco-Roman floor mosaics, the focus of this collage — made with pulp-painted papers pigmented with brindled, earthy colors, cut into shapes — is based upon the Greek bronze “Victorious Youth”. The narrative is the myth of castor and Pollux, born or rater hatched from the same egg their mother Leda produced after coupling withZeus in the guise of a swan, and then with her husband. Both were skilled horsemen, warriors, and navigators. Sailors then and now travel by their transformational constellation, Gemini. When mortally wounded at war, Zeus’ progeny Pollux sacrifices half his immortal privilege to not abandon his brother Castor to eternal darkness and so these twin half-brothers divide their time between Olympus and Hades. Might this be a wondrous depiction of Earth’s transition from Day to Night?