Every once in awhile a piece really surprises me as it works its way towards completion. This piece began with an old wood shelf that I added a foam core back to so that it was more box-like.
I found an old postcard of what could be a settler of the American West. As I studied the photo I thought about how we try so hard to forget the genocide that was a part of the settling of the American West. Pretty early in the process (which is not always true when I am designing an assemblage), I knew what the message was going to be with this piece.
The song This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie came to mind. I have great respect for the social activism of Guthrie and the impact of his music but it shows how from the European perspective, things can be overlooked for the convenience of "progress."
The photograph went into a frame created from an old tin box. I decided that some handmade paper could represent the idea of the sod house on the prairie (although this is not a sod house in the photograph).
I really underestimated the amount of paper it would take to fill this shelf. Good thing over the years I had made plenty of paper from various sources so I had enough to do the trick.
As it turned out, every attempt I made to include some symbolic item to represent the disappeared Indigenous Peoples just ended up looking like appropriation. I decided to just let this coyote skull be the lone representative of the missing.
The literalness of the broom is fine: the true history of the American West is swept away everyday.
Thus we have This Land Is Your Land. It is 40"H X 13"W X 9"D. It consists of a Wood Shelf, Humo Metal Cigar Box, Postcard, Recycled Paper Hand Made Paper, Fern Kona and Abaca Hand Made Paper, Fern Kona and Hosta Hand Made Paper, Dryer Lint Hand Made Paper, Egg Carton and Abaca Hand Made Paper, Unknown Material Hand Made Paper, Corrugated Cardboard, Foam Core and Cougar Skull.
