The collages featured below were created with scissors, glue, and paper ephemera. No computers were used in any part of their construction. The inspiration for this series was found in the tradition of Japanese mandara, a transliteration of the Sanskrit term mandala. Dating back to the ninth century, the mandara was used by Buddhist priests and monastics to evangelize the spiritual rewards associated with pilgrimage. The collages presented here reflect the particularities of this visual culture as it has developed in Japan over the last millennium. Specifically, these collage mandaras are not organized around a celestial deity encircled by a retinue of affiliate gods, as in the case of Indian and Tibetan mandalas. Rather, the collage mandaras that appear below offer a panorama of the sacred forces on the Kumano Kodo. The artworks were collaged from a variety of paper materials. The first source was manga, including Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, Shigeru Mizuki’s Kitaro series, and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s interpretation of Hideaki Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion. The second source was comics, specifically Jack Kirby’s The Eternals. Finally, materials were collected from mass-market publications on Persian rugs, and finally, tourist guides for Japan.
