
Sometimes I wonder why I don't sculpt the figure that one stands in awe of the beauty, or create a piece
that is luscious in its aesthetics? Why don't I use the more traditional art supplies I adore? Why can't I
create a piece to escape into the process and product or express my reactions to this current epidemic?
... as I finish the first part of this piece on homeless children thinking how the children will interact with
the suitcase and what needs to be included in the suitcase. The start of the foster care piece sits across
the room, and the food insecurity piece coalesces in my mind.
Then I realize, it is because this is what I need, what I am driven to create.
that is luscious in its aesthetics? Why don't I use the more traditional art supplies I adore? Why can't I
create a piece to escape into the process and product or express my reactions to this current epidemic?
... as I finish the first part of this piece on homeless children thinking how the children will interact with
the suitcase and what needs to be included in the suitcase. The start of the foster care piece sits across
the room, and the food insecurity piece coalesces in my mind.
Then I realize, it is because this is what I need, what I am driven to create.
Suffer the little children...
Solo Exhibition at Art Reach, Mt Pleasant, MI June 2020
"Suffer the little children..." started as a series of portraits of Syrian, Yemeni, Iraqi, Palestinian, and refugee children who are growing up in war-torn countries. In the beginning of the series, I chose to focus on those children who are living in this hell, though there are those who have been killed that I feel compelled to record their likeness, such as Abdul-Hamid Alyousef's twin son and daughter who, along with 11other members of his family, including his wife, were killed in Bashar al-Assad's chemical attack on his own people on April 4, 2017.
This series of drawings evolved into an ongoing series of sculpture and installation, which confronts the viewers with children living in precarious situations, situations created by our/human action (or inaction).
This series of drawings evolved into an ongoing series of sculpture and installation, which confronts the viewers with children living in precarious situations, situations created by our/human action (or inaction).
Suffer the little Children... Toxins & Viruses
Suffer the little Children... War
Suffer the little Children: War depicts a Muslim girl sitting in the bombed ruins of her home. She wears a Russian gas mask, which has been “embroidered” to reference the Syrian/Aleppo tradition of tone-on-tone embroidery. She wears a mask to protect her from chemical attacks that have become a weapon of her own government. The Russian gas mask and the U.S. army helmet she holds references two of the major players in the Syrian “civil” war as well as other “civil wars” (Yemen, Iraq, Palestine/Israel, etc...) in the Middle East. She is a child of our world, and the collateral damage of ongoing war beyond her control.
Suffer the little Children... Food Insecurity
Suffer the little Children... Homelessness
Suffer the little Children... Guns
Suffer the little Children: Guns is a figure created by a bulletproof hoodie, sweats, & shorts (ballistics fabric) slouched in a school desk w/notepad, Arizona Tea, & Skittles on the desk. The youth is both present and absent, in that the figure is implied by the clothes, but the clothes are empty. The children who are being murdered in school shootings quickly become just more numbers, their specific names and identities quickly fading away in our collective societal conscious, yet the absence is very much felt in the communities. This installation addresses gun violence, specifically school shootings, but also the larger issue of race in our society, where the killing of Black boys/men is rampant. The hoodie and skittles quickly became a symbol of this violence after the murder of Travon Martin, symbols I am using here to make real the gun violence that effects our children, both inside and outside the school classroom.
Suffer the little Children... Foster Care
Suffer the little Children... Border
Crossings depicts a migrant/asylum-seeking child on our own border, in a dog kennel. The faceless child is the “face” of all the children who are housed within large, fenced pens and concentration camps, with only a mylar emergency blanket for “comfort” and “warmth.”