From The Americans

Illustration of an older man with long white hair and a beard, wearing a red garment, set against a blue background. Text below reads: Big ever; mannered and clever, bodies probably hung from me.

America (Uncle Sam), 2022. Mixed-media collage, 3" x 4 ½"

Large 3D letters spelling “FLOOD” stand partially submerged in rising water, with rain falling and mountains in the background. A pasted text strip overlays the image with a poetic message about power, light, and opulence.

The Flood Light, 2021–2022. mixed-media collage, 6 ½" x 9 ½"

A surreal illustration of a Greenhound Lines bus with passengers, as a large, green, tornado-shaped wind spirit blows forcefully at the bus, pushing it forward along a country road at sunset.

The Americans (X), 2021–2022. Mixed-media collage, 9" x 18"

A surreal collage shows a riverside scene with people swimming, but two oversized cartoonish figures—a woman in a swimsuit and a man in a suit—stand out, looming much larger than the other people. Mountains and trees fill the background.

The Americans (XIV), 2022. Mixed-media collage, 9 ½" x 12"

A collage with American flags, skeletons holding hands, and snippets of text discussing shamanism, animism, independence, and protection, arranged in a visually dynamic layout.

These Colors Run, (2022). mixed-media collage, 4 ½" x 7"

Author's Statement:

The Americans began in earnest on January 6, 2021 and had been intermittently appended in the years since, particularly since someone's second Presidential term commenced. The project attempts, through juxtaposing American popular culture with collaged-collective language, to interrogate our national ideals, myopia, and increasingly-buried real history. As a result, The Americans is very hurt and upset!

Reading Note:

I'm currently reading Brad Fox's The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths, which is a surprisingly artful study of the first-ever deep water dive in 1930, Roger Shattuck's The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron (recently reprinted by NYRB Classics), The Collected Poems of Steve Carey, recently released by Subpress, a whole pile of 1940s–1960s French and Italian children's books illustrated by the incredible Libico Maraja (I'm obsessed), and finally, Carlos Eire's They Flew: A History of the Impossible, which is just terrific and scary.

From The Americans

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