The work is coming together. It gets more powerful with each day. I feel like this work honestly has the potential to contribute something outside of my own interests.

Today I worked on the "Given" series and wrestled with the tone of the work. I experimented by adding text and immediately felt the power combined with the image. Having looked at the art of various liberation movements, I realized much of my imagery echoes this tradition. And since I was searching for ways to possibly incorporate text, I found some common themes in these old movements that matched my own movement.

And how bout that? My own movement. I know I'm on to something when the two responses commonly given to my work are ridicule or shutting down.

But that's why it is so critical I work on this slowly, sensitively, and carefully. There is a lot of room for misconstruing.

As for the tone of the Given series, I am wrestling with the humor that inevitably arises. The images are not of me playing characters in the Postmodern sense, but the combination of images may very well be absurd. But in the historical context of political movement images they are fairly in line. Still, in gesturing visually to images that subtly chide the entitlement and privilege that exists in being white and male, there is also room for this to seem insensitive. Like, why would I laugh about my dominance, especially at the expense of the subordination of everyone not in my demographic? And outside the closed group of white people, this is information all too known. So if I left it there, again, it would only be for white audiences, since they're the most resistant to confronting these realities--and because of that, they work wouldn't be that successful in affecting change. Trust me, my white peers, even the most liberal, do not enjoy even broaching these topics. Today, a peer of mine even lowered his voice to say "latino"!

So it can't just end with stating what to many are very well known facts. So I played with some sardonic provocative text, like defensive things usually said to counter the tenuous brittle belief systems upheld by white communities. For instance, this belief that hard work alone equals success, in the wealthy rich sense. In challenging beliefs around the American Dream and a just meritocracy, one has to encounter unsettling questions like, "Did I earn this? Or was it given to me?" In destabilizing the notion that one only has to work hard to succeed, one has to wonder if they could have succeeded without various advantages they were born into that helped them reach their goals easier. Because the questions are disturbing, the response is usually hostile and nonsensical, typically turning to vehement claims of humble beginnings and struggle. I am interested in these hostile responses, for I have felt them myself.

So to a viewer who is tuned into these messages and receives them as common knowledge, what it my offering to them? Sure, it's great and all to hope to activate a simmering response in one audience member. But to the critical observer, where is this supposed to take them, other then to make them roll their eyes at it's own obviousness?

This is where I am. Something is coming to me but it is still foggy. But it ties into the pink collages. The pink collages will be about directing the sardonic messages of the "Given" series into a different, more sensitive, layered avenue. Where the sardonic messages state obvious facts about power in a light flat fashion, the pink collages will do something deeper, more complex, more emotional and human.

The trouble with the Given series is alone they are completely cynical. This is why it is critical I have them engages with other series. Because to be cynical is not good enough. The future has to be contended with and the audience deserves hope. Therefore, there needs to be a gift that viewers take with them and continue to harbor after the fact. This is the great potential of art. It can affect.