Uncorked

Remember this one?

It has now become this one:

I've titled it "We Are All Americans" and I like it alot more than I did with that icky, pastel, sidewalk-chalk-that-puked background that I had given it before! Turquoise is way better. I like turquoise. I sat down last night and just FINISHED it. Practically started and finished it in one sitting, painting the edges this morning after the rest had dried overnight. When I'm on a roll, I guess I'm on a roll!

I free-handed the image with a brush (usually some pencil work is involved, but not this time!). I actually used my own arm and handing holding a flag as the 'model' for the painting, obviously exaggerating the colors and bone structure and stuff. I darkened the skintone as well. My arm was too pale for my point and currently has something that looks like New Jersey drawn on it in blue sharpie because one of my friends decided to play Connect-The-Dots with my freckles while I was working. Yeah.

This one is going to Phoebe's in July (and will also be for sale at Hip Sips this weekend!) and is part of the political thread of paintings I'm working on now, for that month's "theme." The title refers to the current immigration debate and, overall, the subject matter is drawn from my memories of the 2005 immigration rally we had here in Indianapolis.

I was working for the Spanish-language station then, so we had a front row seat to the rally, a march that would start at a downtown Catholic church, and wind its way to the City-County Building, Indianapolis' version of city hall. There's a big square to the south of the building, and we had a platform set up for a good view of the speaking podium so that we could take it live (even though most of our viewing audience seemed to be at the rally). We were all set up and ready to go and its nice and quiet and then... We begin to hear chants of "Sí se puede!" and a sea of 20,000 people, wearing white shirts and carrying American flags, flows from the street into the square. It was amazing. They swarmed in, chanted and rallied, and the leaders speechified. Some of the other stations had just pulled up on the street to get a few minutes of video and then boogie out, but the crowd filled the entire area; those trucks weren't going anywhere; and some of the people even tried to climb on top for a better view!

It was all a very peaceful demonstration, and, at risk of sounding like a hippy, there was a strong and welcome sense of togetherness. These people wanted to put on their best face for the rest of the city, as if to say "See? We're not out to get you, to undermine you, we ARE you." The crowd around our podium was almost more mesmerized by us than the speakers, and I probably could have had 200 people doing the Hokey Pokey if I had just asked.

I took that photo that day, and, I guess that's part of what inspired me to paint this picture. With all the rallies in all the cities that year, it would have been great if some legislation would have been passed at that time, as pay off for all that hard work. But nothing was, and it would be amazing to see that kind of action again. Hopefully, people aren't feeling too apathetic, defeated, or scared to speak up in those kind of numbers again.