COLLAGE

The Kara Walker collage functions as an associative grid because it creates various emotional and memory-based links between its elements instead of using a traditional linear storytelling approach. The individual frames within this wall display their own distinct voices until you step back to see how they create a unified web of identity and historical and racial elements. Your eyes will automatically link the elements while recognizing the natural flow and tension which creates an energetic living wall until your mind starts thinking.

Walker used these artistic techniques as unprocessed elements, which she arranged throughout her artwork. She uses oil and vapor elements in her art because these pieces reach a state of balance between their physical weight and their emotional power, which requires the viewer's attention. The artist achieves a blend of real and abstract elements through his use of charcoal, ink washes, and open spaces, which invite reflection on the vivid and abstract elements. The artwork achieves physical substance and intellectual progression through these artistic elements. The artist shows her artistic development through time by making artwork with unstructured brush movements.

I picked this collage because it reimagines history in fragments, the way memory actually works. Each piece feels like a rediscovered story or a quiet confrontation with the past. It’s intimate but also monumental, one of those works that holds contradiction, pain, and beauty all at once.

Growth - Encouragement - Knowledge - Excellence

This piece is made from many images and is a associative collage because it’s related to a brand I am working on.  Different scenes of people of color in the tech world are all contained within the silhouette of a bottle. Each section of the bottle  tells a consistent story about collaboration, focus, and the right to be in high-thinking and creative spaces, maybe even the “addiction” to creativity and the pursuit of being normalized within this space. (hinted by the “Geekoholic” logo).

Compositionally, it’s obviously built with digital layers and aligns with the Gestalt principles. Your eyes should connect the separate scenes, but also see a unified shape. The bottle outline acts as both a container, keeping everything visually together. There’s a mix of kernel, oil, and vapor at play: the kernel is the idea of creative obsession; the oil comes through in the energy of the characters, a new generation of black thinkers working together; and the vapor is the digital glow and mood, a very futuristic, connected atmosphere that sells the aspiration of what can be, but holding together identity.

I’d describe it as vibrant, modern storytelling, a visual metaphor for how innovation, teamwork, community, and even burnout can all exist inside the same creative “elixer.”