EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH

I love this clipping. it would make such a great billboard. . .or otherwise large graphic. . .the wooden frame and gold plate is just so classic. . .so corporate. . .



here's the original clipping. . . I like this crop the best, which is an unfortunately unreadable size on this blog.

I often notice those depressing employee-of-the-month photos at the grocery store. . . at Publix they tone the images with an interesting nostalgic brown tint, same wooden frame. . . does anyone ever really feel good about these kind of empty tropes of recognition? compared to celebrity success posted on all the racks at the check-out, these real life success stories seem like a cruel joke. . .

WILD HORSES

wild horses are a prevelent symbol found in advertising. pictured here is a clipping of a real estate logo. it's use is perfectly ironic . I painted out the words, to focus on the image separate from the commercial context.

wild horses are a world-wide symbol for freedom and thrusting energy. . .only when captured by humans, do they turn into a conquering/war-like picture. harness-less, wild horses are a symbol very much being hoarded by america. cowboys, open plains, freely roaming animals. The east has dragons. . .and the west has horses (I think we have won temporary ownership of "horses" as our symbol over the previous owners, the monguls-ancient wild horse men from central china/russian/persia. they owned it for a good while).

I am in love with this symbol--wild horses. . .and I am not alone. . .as we gentrify our contemporary existence, tear the wildernesses from our reality and banish them to the past, we mythologize the wild things and freeze them in imagery for all time. . .it's like taking a graphic picture of something that has disappeared--not on an individual basis, but on a larger cultural scale. when things make their transition from historical stories based in reality to full-blown myth, they become exaggerated, larger than life images. I imagine there will be billboards on the moon with pictures of wild horses on them. . .that's how much we love the image ( and not the reality of) wild horses.