Lancaster artist Andrius Alvarez-Backus employs a collage aesthetic that brings together a wide variety of materials: fabric, paint, pastels, wood, wax, feathers, grass, raffia, sand, stones, and found objects. These juxtaposed and aesthetically altered things work in concert with evocative colors, abstract images, and precarious compositions to elicit a sense of uncertainty, instability, and possible disaster. The artist’s work has been deeply informed by images and objects from his Filipino heritage that bear the weight of centuries of colonialism.

Andrius Alvarez-Backus was the First Prize winner in last summer’s 86th Regional Exhibition of Art & Craft at FAM.