Describe the world in 15 collages. The work in this collage exhibition emerges at the tail end (or perhaps a new beginning) of the Covid-19 pandemic. Amidst uncertainty and at a time when many are questioning existence itself, each voice is amplified through confident cuts, brushstrokes, and pasting. Each artist is actively making the unseen seen, and turning our worldview on its head along the way. In their visual confrontation with reality in our digital age, which has become even more palpable due to online instruction and quarantine, each artist celebrates and exaggerates our shared experience, defining this moment through complete abstraction.

Cohort 52 is tied to curriculum in the Applied Art and Design department at Sierra College, and it is produced by students in AAD 52: Publication Design 1 alongside assistant professor Vincent Pacheco. The work developed aims to raise student voices and to create an opportunity for a meaningful exchange, while also elevating the experiences of our time. The project begins by asking students to distill their understanding of the world through 15 mixed media collages. Through this process, students are challenged to assess their unique experiences, cultural backgrounds, and personal beliefs. After these foundational collages have been created, students are then tasked with creating a number of publications where they curate their individual work, and the work of their peers, into a series of zines and hand-bound art books. This is a challenging capstone to the course which advances students from abstract expression in the beginning towards rational problem solving at the end of the term.