The Two Minds of Henry Ferrini and Charles Olson

The creation for the project I chose to do was a collage of images and words that came from both Charles Olsen and Henry Ferrini, I was inspired by their dedication to Gloucester’s well being. The reason for me to focus on both of them is because I found them both to hold very similar thoughts on community-based activism. Henry and Charles both have a passion for Gloucester and I wanted that to be interpreted into my piece and become almost the focus. There were many other elements in the piece that revealed plenty of information on Charles and Henry’s strong views.

The first thing I wanted people to notice was the heads of Charles and Henry. I put two of there heads there because I wanted to show the audience that they were very similar. From listening to Henry about why he created the movie “Polis Is This” was because he grew up hearing and learning about Charles and he wanted to know more about Charles so he created a documentary about Charles Olson. The two heads also are a metaphor for Henry wanting to make Charles come back to life with the movie. Henry wants people to see him again and appreciate all his work and let it live on through his work.

The two heads are connected with a big thinking bubble. The bubble contains images of the town of Gloucester Massachusetts, before and after. The way I organized these images was by placing the before images of Gloucester closer to Henry, and the after images closer to Henry’s side of the collage. I wanted this part of the piece to look like they are both seeing Gloucester only the only difference is the physical appearance of the two. The connection I made between the two was that they both were experiencing changes in the town but at different time periods, but they both do not agree with some of the changes.

The next layer in my piece was the language or words that were used by both Henry and Charles in the movie and Henry’s visit to Malden High School. Many of the quotes and phrases I used in the piece connected to the town of Gloucester Charles spoke about in his poems and the political views Henry had about the community situations they were facing present day. Henry Ferrini when he came to visit seemed to be so dedicated to change for communities only if it were to benefit the community as a whole. Henry spoke a lot about how the working class needs to be active in their communities when it comes to industrialization. I know I can relate to that because where I used to live many people were involved in community, they wanted to make sure when we had tourism that they would see the true community and not just the buildings and the stores. Like Charles was facing in Gloucester, the industrialization, Charles wanted people to see the values and the history of the buildings and homes in the town.

Overall Henry’s dedication to the people and talented unknowns like Charles Olson was before his movie inspired me to think about how important everything around us really is and how we should become involved with what happens around us, in order to gain things and not lose things that can be very valuable. I was inspired to also create the collage of two very talented people by the movie “Polis Is This” and by Henry because he said that Charles was a big part of his childhood and I think that Henry became the next Charles only he was the reincarnation that loves to send his messages visually instead of verbally.