2014 Around the World Collage Series
In 2014, Monica participated in The University of Virginia’s 50th anniversary voyage of Semester at Sea. Embarking from San Diego, CA for a 113-day journey with 554 students representing 24 countries and 280 different colleges and universities. The voyage visited 16 ports and 12 countries around the world. Monica documented her experience by making collages with found papers and street debris. Because space is limited on a ship, the works are small in scale. Even the support papers and glue were sourced during the journey. The Circumnavigation Series, relies on what has been casually discarded like match books or cigarette packs as well as printed matter for travel sites including brochures, various ticket stubs. Monica has a background in hand paper making so also sought out each countries handmade papers. What she found changed from country to country and the resulting collages subtly tell underlying stories about each region’s economy, politics and trans-national connections. Foremost these images are a documentation of travel and the many surprises and moments of beauty one encounters when far away from home.
