Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon Portland Community College

Untitled, (history) by Eunice Parsons

  • Title: Untitled, (history)
  • Artist: Eunice Parsons
  • Medium: Collage
  • Size: 12"h x 12"w
  • Creation date: 2005
  • Added to collection: 2019
  • Donor: Gift of Mark Andres
  • Campus: Rock Creek
  • Location: B2/2 S Print gallery

Eunice Parsons frequently mines the realms of art history in her collages to create works that at once seem familiar but also new.  The face of an unknown woman (possibly from a portrait by Ghirlandaio) becomes a melancholy witness to history: scraps from illuminated manuscripts (details of Gothic architecture, a wounded knight, the rear of a horse), a pair of groping hands from a wrecked magazine advertisement, French Fleurs-de-lis and playing cards, all evoke the game of war and its "zero" (see the clunky early computer key) sum game.  The strange form below the woman (made from pieces of spray-painted paper) looks like a molten rock or an egg about to crack open. What could otherwise be a mish-mash checklist of elements is made into a seamless and unified whole by this artist's impeccable sense of the rightness of forms and their placement .