Ohio

Caption written summer 2020 and edited for context

This was a piece for a project spearheaded by Cody James, a former bandmate of mine, where each art piece was based on a 60s counterculture song; I chose Crosby Stills Nash & Young’s “Ohio”. That song was about the Kent State massacre, where four students were killed and nine wounded by the Ohio National Guard, protesting the incursion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia.

This is based off John Filo’s Pulitzer-winning photograph; however, notably absent is the figure of Mary Ann Vecchio wailing over the body of Jeffrey Miller – we’ve become so accustomed to state-sanctioned violence, whether that is domestic military deployment like at Standing Rock; militarized police as we’ve seen in Portland, Louisville, Buffalo, Rochester, Ferguson, Richmond, Brooklyn and Seattle; or right-wing “lone wolves” shooting and running over protesters like in Kenosha, Aurora, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles; it’s so much that four dead barely seems newsworthy. The faceless figures are barely even paying attention to the corpse, already fading into what’s next on the news cycle.

There is a pervasive attitude in this country that treats human lives as disposable, when the reality is human life is the one thing insurance can’t indemnify. There is no replacing a dead child. There is no way to make just the killing of another. The only superfluous lives are the ones so solipsist as to treat human life as disposable. Black Lives Matter.

Spray paint on Sheet metal

12in x 12in

2020, Black, White, Red, Studies, Commissions, My Favorites