(3.16) Frankly, contemplating The End doesn’t bother me nearly as much as thinking about this middle just going on and on. One big fat gamma-ray burst would put us all out of our misery and perhaps make room for a superior life form. The End is at Hand, a collection of short essays and linocut prints by artist Darrel Perkins, describes how people throughout history have envisioned the end of the world. From the People of Print:
The End is at Hand was a Covid project, starting as an exhibition featuring linocut prints about the end of the world, but the stories expanded into a fully researched non-fiction book. Sixty linocut illustrations were drawn, carved, and printed by hand to pair with the stories. The images and stories reflect our cataclysmic fears including asteroids, volcanos, flood, plague, artificial intelligence, global warming, and of course, each other.
On Thursday, the artist will be discussing his new book at Symposium Books downtown, “I’ll bring linocut blocks used to illustrate the book, I’ll talk about how the book came to be, and we can discuss the many ways the world could end.” See his work at IG.
Seen here is a medieval plague doctor wearing a beak mask filled with sweet-smelling herbs. (What a comforting sight they must have been.) On the right is the far more effective, modern version.
(We first met Mr.Perkins four years ago during more optimistic times.)
Perkins Book Talk, 6:30, Thursday, March 16, Symposium Books, 240 Westminster Street, (directions)