Broken Brown Bottles

Well, there was a bit of drama with my isp this week so I couldn't post this article at my normal time, but I decided this would be a good opportunity to change my usual posting day to Sundays.

Today we will be looking at a piece called Broken Brown Bottles by Shera Simon (aka belltower on Etsy.)

Simon is the daughter of an artist and a pastor. As an African-American woman who grew up in the south and now lives in Philadelphia, cultural differences between states, regions, and continents have been a major influence on her art.

Broken Brown Bottles is a mixed media collage using paper, broken bottles and other found materials to express the ambivalent emotions that many African Americans are faced with when thinking of Africa. The continent of Africa is reconstructed from maps of American States, symbolically reforming the U.S. into something like that fabled, ancestral home that many children of immigrants long for, in whatever form. The bits of broken brown beer bottles invoke the wound of separation and sometime resentment that has come to exist between American blacks and native Africans. These wounds are often inexplicable, irreversible, and inexpressible.

Using the form of a map in itself highlights the artificial connections and boundaries that humans spend their lives creating and generations maintaining. Simon has managed to capture and express so much human nature without presenting a single human figure. I look forward to seeing more of this artist :)

Tune in next week to learn more about another indie artist!