Second Place - Open
Andrew McCready, Tulsa

BARTLESVILLE
PRESENT SHAPED BY THE PAST

When I first heard this year's theme, "Our Town: Where we live, learn, work, pray and play," I couldn't help but picture a historic, small town setting, where each of these key elements of a town have been built. From this image I developed the concept for Bartlesville: Present Shaped By the Past. To me this concept is very important in everything that exists. Everything around us is the way it is through its test of time. The discoveries, developments and events which were involved with Bartlesville history has created what we know today as Bartlesville. Everything from the discovery of oil, to the development of the railroad, to the construction of the Price tower has evolved Bartlesville over time. With this concept being so powerful and true it doesn't stop with the town, but it applies to all things. People, neighborhoods, communities, towns, countries all follow the same concept, what we are today is what the past has created.

The collage began with an old Santa Fe passenger train which creates a focal point of the collage and serves as a base for the timeline which is developed through the collage. The train represents two things: one being the historic importance of the train coming to Bartlesville, the second, allowing the train to represent movement, into the future and what lies ahead for the development of Bartlesville.

With the timeline being established by the tracks from the train the only thing left was to develop the layout for the rest of the collage. I decided to leave the stained board below the tracks exposed representing the red clay found in Oklahoma. The images used along the timeline were chosen for their historic importance. Starting with the black and white photos on the left side of the collage and switching to colored photos going to the right creates a comfortable feel to collage and shows another level of evolvement with technology. The black vertical elements were composed to create a continuous rhythm through out the collage and allowed for text to be added to describe the photographs. Once this was completed the collage development into a rhythmic timeline establishing important events through Bartlesville history.