A Business

Nostalgia imagery, circa 1925 US, reinforces dominant cultural identity with common tropes— strike oil and you’re rich and it’s stars, stripes and an admiring crowd everywhere. But are they admiring? Maybe assessing, perhaps watering a seed of jealousy, but definitely participating on some level with a game of ranking. The ‘pretty maids all in a row’ volunteer in the bathing beauty contest, presumably judged according to pulchritude or costume, or perhaps favor, by suited men standing in the shadows of a carousel shaped tent. It’s the beach, the sun, the festive banners; everyone shows how you’re supposed to have fun. Hardship-affirming wagon wheels nod to the ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ idea that drudgery and labor must be endured to reach the mythologized promise of happy days (here again!), until you come to an understanding of that apparently endless cycle of your participation on the ups and downs of the Wheel of Fortune. Also central in the composition is a cylindrical entry to a bunker and its idea of safety underground, and hiding, and hoarding, and self-preservation — actions that strengthen the block to seeing what suffering and deceit may be masked by pageantry and hidden in plain sight. All the while, a zoetrope strip of ever dancing clowns is topmost.

A Business, 24” x 42”, 2015-2023, was painted in oil on glue-chalk gesso over glue size on cradled hardboard panel