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Thru the Mirror: the story behind Pride
Matthew Broderick as the immortal Ferris Bueller quoted John Lennon as saying, "I don't believe in -ism's, I just believe in me..." He continued to say that John was a Walrus... I always thought Paul was the Walrus... oh, well... the point of this piece concerns my lack of a need to belong to institutions. I am me... PERIOD... not a member of any group, no organized religion, no membership dues to the club of the week... I don't even have a subscription to anything. This piece speaks of my pride as an American, the one 'institution' in which I feel pride. The reason for using 'United States' instead of 'America' stemmed from a debate in the art department about the people of the US's arrogance to think that we alone are 'Americans' and Canadians, Mexicans, and South Americans are not, purely by laziness in curtailing our name to America. I am not 100% thrilled with the choices and actions of the mass population of this country, but there is no where else I would call Home.
Aside from the political points behind tihs piece, there is also the self portrait aspect of it. I have always felt that to gain immortality, one must become iconic - meaning being able to be represented in as few strokes as posible. Alfred Hitchcock can be named in a simple outline, Abe Lincoln with a silloutte, Elvis witha big hair-do and sideburn... the list is endless, and I think you get the point. So, thru my style, I could, in forms of mass, create an icon of myself. Over a decade later... yep... I still look the same... same shades, same goatee, same hair... I am no longer a college student living the delusion that I will be an icon destined for immortality; I have remained the same due to my internal sense of integrity and my lack of want to chase the rainbow society calls fashion. The bulk of the self portraits done in the college days contain sunglasses, the ones since then have proven to show more of me from the inside.
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