Medieval Nightmares

Medieval Nightmares (2016), 13.5×20″ each, encaustic collage on paper.

This series is made from individual folio pages from the book European Brasses by A.C. Bouquet and Michael Waring, published by Frederick Praeger Publishers in 1967. Brasses are funerary or memorial effigies made by incising portrait images into a large sheet of metal made from a combination of copper and zinc (called latten). They were popular from the 11th – 14th centuries in Northern central Europe, especially Flanders, Germany and France.

The brasses were permanently installed in churches and mausoleums and feature a variety of personages (vicars, church patrons, wealthy merchants, etc. and their families). I have combined these memorials that sought to assure glory for the afterlife with images of planets and solar system in a sort of mash-up of old and new cosmos.

Three of these nasties so far. All feature critters with whom you would not want to share your bed.

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I am a librarian and artist living in Eugene, Oregon — where it is often damp and always green.