Around every river and canal their power is growing.
2018
(nothing can stop them; around every river and canal their power is growing)
(we must destroy them; they infiltrate each city with their thick dark warning odor)
(they seem immune to all our herbicidal battering)
(a Victorian explorer found the regal Hogweed by a marsh; he captured it and brought it home)
(royal beast did not forget)
(and made a present of the Hogweed to the Royal Gardens at Kew)
(they are approaching; hurry now, we must protect ourselves and find some shelter)
(they are defenseless; they all need the sun to photosensitize their venom)
(had some cultivated wild gardens; in which they innocently planted the Giant Hogweed throughout the land)
(preparing for an onslaught; threatening the human race)
(Human bodies soon will know our anger! Kill them with your Hogweed hairs! Heracleum Mantegazziani)
Original Collages Available
Framed in oiled and waxed cherry wood, with linen mats and eight Job’s Tears beads included in each frame, individually, or, preferably, as a complete set. Contact Michael Koppa to request photographs and discuss pricing.
This suite of collages was inspired by paging through the April 1950 issue of National Geographic, and coming across a photo-documentary of the Royal Gardens at Kew, which brought to mind a melody with a dire warning. Ensuing spontaneous 21st-century research, made popular by the world wide web, led to a brilliant review of the song in my memory. What was once pure entertainment to my teenage ears just so happens to be a surprisingly real treatise on the nature of invasive species in our eco-systems, which, coincidentally (or was it subconsciously?) has become a minor passion in my adult life, as a member of The Prairie Enthusiasts.
All collages in this album measure 12.7 x 10 cm, and are made of National Geographic photos by B. Anthony Scott and ©1950 NGS; reproductions of paintings by English masters (Arthur Devis, Francis Hayman, William Hogarth, Allan Ramsay, and Paul Sandby) from a book of English painters; croquet imagery and text from the Skowhegan Croquet Rule Book, published by Forster Mfg. Co., Inc., of Wilton, Maine, in 1974; photographic images from Lands & Peoples, Vol. II, ©1929, 1930 The Grolier Society; and inkjet printed images of Heracleum mantegazzianum (The Giant Hogweed) downloaded from the internet in 2018, with acid free adhesive on rag mat board, and Liquitex Gloss Varnish finish.
The titles are the lyrics from The Return of the Giant Hogweed, written by Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, and Mike Rutherford (Genesis), published in 1971. The copyright is assumed to belong to them. No intention here to claim ownership of any copyrighted material. This suite of collages is merely an homage and interpretation, paying respect to the heroes of the soundtrack of my youth, and one of my favorite record albums, Nursery Cryme, by Genesis, which I discovered in 1983 at age 14, while immersing my teenage self in the entire Genesis catalog on vinyl, with Koss headphones.