ReWARds

I've recently started collecting postcards and fliers from clubs, shops, cafes and anywhere else I find them. In London, over Thanksgiving, I collected about 200 different items, mostly advertising bands, and deejays, or art galleries. The image above I created by submerging in liquids, then photographing it with a macro lens. It says reward because after watching too many movies about WWII recently, I have a fascination with war.. and the word ReWARd, (oh the irony of the spoils of war that are often so beneficial to the victorious parties... President Bush.. Halliburton.. postwar Commie Germany) I think heaps of the war in Iraq and remember during the 2004 election living in a crazy house in Boulder, CO where we had a 10 foot sign on our front porch that read, "NO WAR FOR OIL!". I liked John Kerry, I cried that November, really I did.

The woman in this image looks as if she is bidding farewell to the world, she's sinking in the bubbly stew that I created for her, which is partly comprised of the different oils I have been manipulating and experimenting with. She could also be blowing you a kiss.. Reminiscent of a 1940's pin-up girl, she works with my whole World War Two theme. She doesn't resemble Eva Braun though, so the idea that flit around in my head for a few brief milliseconds about Eva saluting the Third Reich quickly dissipated. (Thankfully because if was a ridiculous stretch, even for me. Plus there were no rewards for Germany after the allies had that shit on lock down... perhaps it could have gone somewhere else with different text.. but maybe I should move on from discussing Nazis because I haven't even had lunch yet..) In conclusion, London, pin-up girls, blitzkrieg bombing raids, oil and war.. It makes sense to me.. comes full circle quite nicely. The text needs some work, I don't like the colour or the font.. but its only a prototype for an eccentric idea that will develop over time...
This is another one.. adventures with text that I took off of another postcard then manipulated in Illustrator with some background texture from another submerged collage image. It's not easy caring about issues like the planet and politics... really, it isn't. My life would be far less complicated if I wasn't burdened with a social conscience and a desire to save the earth from global warming and weapons of mass destruction.