In my sustainable systems class, Professor Joel Towers discussed and questioned the role of collaboration in creating the Anthropocene. I found it interesting when he described this as collaboration without meaning. I immediately developed an idea for this piece, which would display a perspective of a diluting world. I wanted my work to capture that collaboration doesn’t always cause positive things to happen. I used dark and faded colors to show that the earth disintegrating. By portraying human beings drawn at stick figures, I captured the lack of seriousness in which we hold this issue to be. The figures were drawn without eyes, to acknowledge how the problem is often ignored. Choosing to draw the people with white was also intentional because it is a color associated with purity and innocence. I wanted the white color, and meaning of purity, to symbolize the way we see ourselves. My piece posses this question: how can we, human beings, act with resiliency when we are still smiling blindly at the realities that face us?
Initial Sketch:
