trip to peru
This weekend I started working on a few pieces about by my recent trip to Peru, specifically our 5 day trek to Machu Picchu that I was lucky enough to share with 10 other extraordinary people. The idea was inspired by a good friend of mine in Boise who encouraged me to create a collage based on the experience. Thanks to that encouragement, I looked at my surroundings in a different way and gathered source material with a concrete concept in mind, which is a new approach for me.
Some of the imagery and subjects I plan to include are Machu Picchu, Inca culture, Andes Mountains, Urubamba River, Salkantay Peak, Peruvian textiles, coffee plants, train tracks, stairs, greenery, rain, clouds, mountain orchids, coca leaves, condors, llamas, Chakana (or Inca Cross), and possibly a map of the region. Organizing these disparate elements into a cohesive collage will certainly be a challenge-- not unlike hiking 50 miles, reaching 15,000 feet of elevation, and climbing 1,500+ stairs. That, however, was a different kind of feat for me. Ultimately, in this series I hope to capture the way Machu Picchu seems to float like an island amongst the clouds atop a flattened mountain at 7,972 feet. Below are some inspiration photos, the majority of which I took; the others I gathered from different sources. Stay tuned. Perhaps some of these will make it into a final collage!
