Just in the past week, my collage creatures have begun to change in a subtle way: I’m seeing recognizable faces appear on the usual Frankenstein bodies. Many of the faces belong to people inhabiting the orbits of current popular culture, celebrities and public figures, politicians.
Bin Fridge Magnet Laden
As I make them, my gut reaction is ‘oh wow, this is so funny – Osama’s got lipstick and big hands and Bob Lanier legs!’ but a deeper meaning has surfaced today when I was reading something about Dylan.
Bob Dylan’s thoughts on individuality struck a chord in me. He has ideas about the importance of finding one’s own character, that quintessential American quest for true identity. Dylan seems to think it’s very important that each of us stand totally and unequivocally apart from our peers.
It seems that putting popular faces on my creatures lends them a recognizability, a unique identity, a singular individuality. I definitely agree with Bob on this: We Americans, as a culture, yearn for this separateness, yet technology’s onslaught demands distractions which essentially rob from us ourselves. This modern predicament is, I think, one of things I’m expressing through my creatures. I’ve got disparate parts of people re-assembled grotesquely, now with recognizable faces, changed from something familiar and typical into another thing only vaguely so.
Ultimately, I’m questioning identity itself, and what seems to be a culture-wide search for individuality.
