Georgia O'Keeffe

Ceci N'est Pas Un Pistolet

Still life

Landscape

Social Issue: Marginalized Topic

For my group's social issue we decided to focus on racism that is portrayed here in America. My specific piece I wanted to show that the United States shows these images at young ages for black children of who to be, what you can be, how to be it. Some for the good and some for the bad.

I took a 10 x 14 textured board and covered it with house paint. My next step was to paint over the board with Titanium White paint. I googled different tags such as, "black stereotypes" "jezebels" "negative impacts on black society" "black media" "black women" and etc. to search for pictures that have been effecting generations of people of color. I grabbed a plastic container and poured warm water in the container so the water would run the color from the printed paper. I also added Hansa Yellow acrylic paint to give the images this tainted gritty look. I dipped the images from somewhere in between 5 and 10 seconds. After my medium dried, I painted a television in the center of the board with a hypnosis swirl in the middle with a vacuum like tube coming out of the back. I took watered down Elmer's glue and layered the pictures across the board. Afterwards I sprayed the pictures with an adhesive to make them stale and stick up almost as a 3D look. Above all of the pictures I painted on a tube that is dumping the social stigmas into the television below. The American flag is painted onto the tube and the stars are replaced by the governmental "All-Seeing Eye." Lastly I added a little black girl sitting in front of the television being hypnotized from watch she watches.

I like the overall way that this piece came out. The ruggedness of the whole concept to me brings this street and blunt truth to what is really going on in the world and how media effects people making it a social issue.

Dorm Room Decorations

Monochromatic Painting