Moderately Offensive Design.

It doesn't really have a title other than this:

Americana, Then and Now; The Media's portrayal of American Society.

*Editors note*

I felt this piece deserved more of an explanation, showing the reasoning behind the way it was arranged, since a lot of thought went into it, and there are small details that could easily be lost when it's been shrunken down to this size.

1) The concept behind this series of images, was to create a representation of the televisual experience that we see on a regular basis. (Okay, those of us who watch television. I'm not one of them.) My teacher for this particular class often assigns rather open ended assignments, leaving our creativity to roam, and at the point in time that the assignment was given to us, I had been browsing the paintings and images of Norman Rockwell, (you may remember a previous post I had written on his imagery of "Rosie The Riveter") finding his work to be both beautiful, and symbolizing an era that has long since faded from the minds of both the American populace, as well as how the world viewed them. The left panel consists of Rockwell's work, the images "Freedom of Speech" (middle image), "The Runaway" (background image) and "A Marine's Homecoming." (forefront).

I wanted to create the notion of these characters, for the most part of being aware of the actions and events occurring in the present, and symbolizing the "innocence" and sense of how the U.S. used to be the purveyors of justice, protecting the world from Fascism, etc. Instead of being seen the way they are today by the world, which is a country that is falling apart at the seams, being both politically torn apart, as well as having horrible issues regarding terrorism, and the all around anger and frustration being aimed at the American nation. A definite juxtapostion from the way they were percieved before. (Excepting the image of the police officer and little boy in the background, I chose to have them being unaware of their surroundings, to symbolize the way that authority was represented in the 40s and 50s compared to the police brutality etc, occurring within the past 25 or so years that has actually been shown in the media, where the occurance of a little boy running away from home, was something to make a lighthearted painting of, rather than the horrors that can happen to children now.)

The second panel, with the center image being one of the characters from Rockwell's "The Swimming Hole", running terrified away from the things that are happening in the present, and back into the safety of the past, behind this is an image of United States Soldiers, from an actual image taken from a soldier's website, the picture was entitled "War Dance" and to view it on it's own is chilling, to say the least.

The third panel consists of the "present". George W. Bush, obviously plays a major part in the politics within the past almost six years, as well as his father, which is a smaller image in the lower left hand side of the tableau. (Note, that somehow on google images I found a picture of him doing the "Sign of the Devil, Dude!". That was a stroke of luck, but I'm not sure if the context and humour usage is fitting for an image like this, but was something I couldn't resist.) Since it's my personal political opinion that Dubya is finishing the war his father started, and also creating his own battles in the process for the country. All of the images of soldiers are actual images from Iraq, including the picture of the soldier holding the mostly decapitated body of a toddler, recovered from the site where a bomb had recently landed, (This image nauseated me) as well as the image of the little girl that has serious facial injuries. These are all innocent victims of the war against Iraq, and every image was picked with a purpose. The burning twin towers in the background, while I debated on choosing them, since the issue has been beaten to death, are a sign that the United States is NOT as impervious as it thinks it is, and that the actions they take against other groups and countries will not always be taken lying down. Not that I condone the behaviour of the Al Quieda in the least, but most individuals can admit to the fact that the U.S. certainly took that as a shocker.

All of these images were appropriated online, from various media sources, military troop sites, political protest sites. All of them were found using the Google images search feature.

Technical aspects of the piece:

In the original, each tableau panel is 11 inches across by 17 inches tall, (combined it is 33 inches across, by 17 inches tall.) the resolution is set to 300 dots per inch, and the colour is designated as CMYK, for print resolution and not screen the original file size was a staggering 191 megs, and is meant to be a printed piece. The tableau panels set as you see them in the screen image are created from the originals. These have all been changed for screen resolution, (72 ppi, RGB. 1024 by 498 pixels.)

I know it may seem like I'm being anal, explaining it when you guys could come to your own conclusions about it, and by all means, interpret it as you will. I just wanted to give the piece it's due. I worked pretty hard on it.