Nancy Hayden is an artist, writer, organic farmer, and engineering professor living in Jeffersonville, Vermont, currently finishing a creative writing MFA in fiction at Stonecoast in Maine. As part of her MFA, she has been writing a novel set in France during WWI. This past year, she decided to make art with a similar theme. She used weathered wood, encaustic paints, and paper to recreate scenes from WWI to depict soldiers as silhouettes, shadows, indistinguishable from each other, and blindly following orders. Since war does not exist outside of society, but is a part and an outgrowth of it, she created a collage from the period book Youth’s Companion with advertisements depicting the militarism, racism, sexism, and consumerism prevalent in the U.S. at the time. Antique toys and Uncle Tom’s Cabin paper dolls reproduced from a 1905 Boston paper suggest how children become indoctrinated early into the violence of mainstream culture. The backside of the triptych is a collage of women from the time period..For more art and writing activities, visit her website www.northwindarts.com (still a work in progress. Photo of Nancy, above, taken in WWI French trench.)
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