The Inauguration of Barack Obama

January, 2009 is a historic month! Barack Obama will become out first African American President and George W. Bush will become out first President in Outer Space (At least if the American people had their way). Other cameos by Alan Greenspan (pouring out his 40 for his dead Wall Street homies), Hillary Clinton (still campaigning to the right of Obama), John McCain (far left), Tim Gunn (right of Obama), Vicente Fox, Henry Kissinger, Al Gore mixed in with several other `characters` by Merrill Kazanjian. Art is always a reflection of the era in which it was created and a means to understand the world. Ironically, I have learned a lot about myself and my views on contemporary life, while creating, `The Inauguration of Barack Obama`. Most of the realizations that I made were regarding the processes that I chose to employ (and why I used them), while creating my artwork. This image took me “a year” and “an hour” to make! But, I do not mean three-hundred–sixty-five days and sixty minutes. Essentially, my best illustrations that I made in 2008 are digitally juxtaposed in to this image (Which is what I meant by a year) and it took me about an hour to digitally juxtapose them to a photograph of the Capitol Building (an hour). This is a very different method compared to media that I had used in the past. But, I felt a need to “trim the fat” (cut the time and price) from my artistic processes and I abandoned the time consuming formulas of traditional oil painting for a process that perfectly fits my image making needs. To put things in to perspective, I am a full time teacher and a new father in addition to being an artist, so, my time is scarce, but innovations are always created from needs! I created a method of image making that I call the “tradigital process” that merges the best traits of traditional art (surface beauty through man made manipulation of materials) and digital art (speed). In early 2008, I tried to look at myself and my situation objectively and I had an epiphany as an artist. I shifted my mentality, my materials and my approach. Videos, which descriptively detail the tradigital process can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unnHsHps0qY
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwVMy1AyKHQ I deliberately chose “The Inauguration of Barack Obama” to be the culmination of my first year working tradigitally. He is hope for the future, a change, a different path. In my opinion, the quality of lifestyle in America has plummeted over the last decade. The middle class has vanished, with the exception of jobs in education, medical services and other civic jobs such as law enforcement and firefighting. Any job that can be replaced by machines has been. Other “irreplaceable” jobs have been sent overseas where labor unions are less relevant or currencies are cheaper than our plummeting dollar. The monetary tightening of American business is rhetorically justified as creating efficiencies for the shareholders of companies. While average workers are, “nickled and dimed”, greed and hypocrisy are still alive and well at the financial summit of America, as evidenced by the weekend long spa trip (costing $440,000!), taken by “stressed” AIG executives after getting bailed out of bankruptcy by the Government (aka the tax payers). “Trickle Down” or “supply side” economics has proven, once again that nothing trickles once the “weather gets cold” as evidenced by all of the “frozen” assets such as homes that have “fallen off a cliff” in price. Money is being made but it is not distributed, it is being horded. People who do have jobs are now justifying their salaries by producing now what was once the responsibility of three people. And there is a ridiculous amount of competition for the few, well paying jobs that are out there. A school on Long Island received over 10,000 resumes for one vacant art position! The Father of Economic Theory, Adam Smith theorized that competition is great in the marketplace because it lowers prices, but the level of competition in America right now is unhealthy for the amount of jobs that are available. In the thirty years that I have lived, I cannot remember a time that was more depressed, tired but hopeful than right now. There is a growing social camaraderie that transcends race that is developing in America now. If I did my job as an artist, much of the wording of the last two paragraphs will be translated in to imagery in my work.