Small pox is a drawing that shows images of missiles that, in the true spirit of the euro-centric view of aboriginal culture as great source material for colorful mascot names, reference Native Americans. I wanted to create this drawing within this series now, to just throw out there a reminder to the early days of European expansion into North America, when Native Americans were deliberately given blankets that had been used by victims of small pox as a form of biological warfare. It is appropriate in my mind to remember this within the present day context of our presence in Iraq, for which part of the reasoning given to us for going there was the danger of Iraq using biological weapons.
Now for the rant!
The more that I get in to this series the more I’m learning and discovering and the more I want to take the series in a direction that would make me find out answers to certain questions. The struggle becomes, for me, where do I draw the line between ranting and raving about the awfulness of our military/industrial complex and creating good art? I’d like it to be; whatever I wish to put down on paper, no matter how much it comes off as ranting should be great art. I’m impatient with ideas of “quality” and “craftsmanship”. These are desperate times, we artists need to act and act now! The key or first step toward change or improvement in the state of the world seems to me, would be to present the truth or information about all the bad things. This seems simple enough to do and as an artist I can simply present information in my drawings. My hope is that if I’m clever enough visually I can get people to want to have and keep these drawings, thus having and keeping this information and putting it in full view on their wall at home or work as a kind of really cool and interesting, giant “post-it”. And that’s it…that’s all I need to do, and it’s real easy to do, and that’s what this series is gonna be all about.
Yesterday I sat down and wrote down a few questions about these missiles that I’m depicting, like: “How many Hellfire missiles have been dropped for real?” “What word do they (military) use for this? Deployed?” “When, where were they dropped? Who was killed?” “How big is our military industrial complex? How many people are employed? Who are these people that work on missiles, designing and building them? What are their other interests, hobbies, skills, qualifications, background?”
To answer all of these questions I’m sure I could write a book and I’m sure that there are thousands of books and articles that have been written already, but so what? No one can read all of it with their “free” time so why not put that kind of information in art, not instead, but in addition, as a kind of visual “link” to other information and knowledge that exists out there in the world? By putting information in art what you’ve done is created that very large talisman that people hang on their wall and there it stays for years as a visual reminder to think about the things that are in the artwork, not lose track. And that’s it that’s the best that art can do, the least that art can do. The difference between this kind of art and written articles and books is that art can give pleasure at the same time that it can inform, through its composition and form, and that’s a good, healthy and therapeutic function that is great and needed by anyone interested in trying to effect change and anyone who loves to look at art.
What’s cool about this Prison Papers series is that I can explore this concept of presenting lots of information “visually” within the format of a drawing, through the device of the tablature of the ready-made prison form.
