Judge Not This Race by Empty Remains

Judge Not This Race By Empty Remains

A number of my pieces are influenced by lyrics from songs that have embedded themselves in my consciousness, and this one is such an example. But first a word about the conception and techniques involved in the piece.

Not long before I began putting this together, I bought a Cricut Explorer 3 machine, mainly because I wanted to produce my own die-cuts and stencils. After getting to grips with the kit’s functionality, I inputted my design in three phases, each of which would layer one on top of the other. The shapes produced were influenced by a bas relief I saw during one of my many hours of browsing on t’internet. I cut out each separate layer on card printed from an abstract background from my library. The next phase was to choose one of my many fodder pieces, produced from sessions of gel plate printing. The orange and yellow scheme of the chosen paper seemed to fit the colour scheme that my die cut had adopted. It simply remained to mount and glue in place the three layers in a technique I borrowed from Seth Apter. I was very pleased with the result, as I was with my framer’s choice of surround in red.

Those of you who are fans of early Genesis may recognise the title as one of the lines from their song, ‘Watcher of the Skies’ which, in turn, was influenced by Arthur C. Clarkes book, ‘Childhood’s End,’ mixed with a John Keates poem and reference to a TV program called ‘Watchers’. The lyrics were written by Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford (not Peter Gabriel as I originally thought) and tell the story of an alien race viewing the destruction of the human race centuries on. They wonder what could have happened to such a race of apparently intelligent creatures. The bas relief die cut I had made reminded me of those aerial photographs taken by satellites that reveal topography hitherto undetectable at ground level. The pattern seemed to suggest a city built by an ancient civilisation, long since destroyed and decayed over millennia.

Personally, I like looking at this piece under different lighting. When the illumination is more subdues, the background in the upper RHS takes on the appearance of a setting African sun in the Serengeti. I guess the leopard print at the lower RHS reinforces this. As is often my wont, the piece employs different layers, both in the underlying backdrop and the die cut itself.

Do you see any other themes or imagery in this?