Thursday, January 24, 2008

Giving for a good cause (and thoughts on the next creation)

(This blog will not have any photos)

Last year I donated a butterfly person to a geriatric foundation in Florida which was doing a silent auction to benefit geriatrics and I reasoned that if we live long enough we would all be geriatrics so I thought it was a good cause.
Well, today I was contacted by a volunteer community fundraiser called Relay For Life which will hold a silent auction on June 20th in Woodbury, MN; and all proceeds will go to the American Cancer Society. They are seeking unique, distinctive items and I am going to actually make them a special butterfly person, she may read: “Relay For Life” but that may be unnecessary, I will think about it. Either way she will be beautiful and probably faceless since cancer doesn’t discriminate.

Im thinking about a new piece, it is going to involve racial stereotypes and juxtapose two female figures, facing each other as if looking into the mirror. Im not sure how to make this piece without contradicting myself because there are going to be a brown figure and a white/lighter figure, it will represent African Americans and whites, however the white figure will have the bushy afro-style hair while the black person will have straight, light-colored hair. The thing is speaking about race and also wanting what the other race has such as hair and features, but I don’t think I want to switch the features because then the white one would just look albino and the brown one would look like a person from India. Should I even attempt it? I’m thinking keep the traditional “African” features on the brown figure even though this is continuing with following stereotypes which I wanted to address, but the hair will be switched and perhaps eye color… I want to do this because (in New York at least) you see many white girls with dreadlocks now and African-American girls with straightened and colored hair. I’m not against any of it, I just want to speak about it, how the different races want what they were not born with, with what the other one has. This could be done as early as tomorrow sometime if I get offline and start working on it.

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