A+Sunset+on+Humanity

A SUNSET ON HUMANITY- JOHN MCGUE Wow what beautiful artwork! How could someone of mortal descent have created this? Well, I guess you would need to read my literary analysis to answer that question, so here it goes: This box is a look into the swirling sands of time which surround our everyday life. It talks about how quickly nature overcomes all that mankind has created, including what we believe to be solid today. This theme is achieved through a combination of my title, "A Sunset on Humanity" and the artful arrangement of the pieces in this work. This setup includes a setting sun on a red background, with an ocean beneath it stretching towards the sands of time (literally sand from the beach near my house) in which several items are buried. These items are, in order from closest to furthest from the sun (chronological order), a sea-turtle figurine, a sand dollar, a sharks tooth, a mummy, a roman cathedral, an antique bottle, a religious pendant, a science medal, and a miniature car. This arrangement of oldest to newest talks about how the things in the past have already been buried, while things we create today, while not necessarily gone, will inevitably be covered by the sands of time in the future. Along these paths, all of the objects in the box represent some aspect of human involvement in the past. The crude artwork of the turtle and preserved sea life represent crude attempts at artwork by humans in the past. These are almost entirely covered by sand, meaning that they have almost been forgotten. Closer pieces, such as the car or science medal, represent more recent innovations which have not yet been swallowed so thoroughly. This idea of the past swallowing the present relates to none of the books we have reviewed this year, which makes it a rather stupid connection. Woops. Oh but on to how I came up with this box; I was driving home on Monday before this was due when I remembered the half circle of surf wax I had in my basement. Since I was driving directly towards the beach I had the brilliant idea of combining the two. Thus the surf wax became the sun, paper became the ocean, and sand became the sand. After that I just threw some junk from my room into the sand and called it artwork.