Ferdinand Collage

Using hundreds of carefully curated cuttings, I seek to create collages that speak to the inter-connectivity between humans and their environment. Each piece consists of intricately constructed human figures made of images of flora and fauna, layered between multiple sheets of resin to create three-dimensional forms. My earliest memories consist of my childhood in Southeast Alaska and the local Native American creation myths of shape-shifting entities that could be animal, plant, or human at will. After years of studying and then teaching figurative painting in the states and abroad, I returned to the Pacific Northwest and my love of nature and the stories of my youth were reignited. Armed with my anatomical studies, I began piecing together my own mythical creatures, both human and plant, wed by the repetition of organic patterns and structures. My work explores humanity's relationship to nature, the repetition of organic forms, patterns, and structures that reoccur in the world around us as well as the world within us. I want to show the likenesses between the natural world and human anatomy: sticks as arteries, root systems as veins and capillaries, the knots and joints in wood as the knuckles, joints, and phalanges in our hands and feet. On a deeper level, I hope to illustrate through these similarities humanity's inter-relatedness and dependence on the natural world.