Venice Beach Chorus Line, 2004, 21’h x 34’w, Ocean Front Walk, Venice. CA.
Changing Cultural Paradigm
Community Murals from 2007 - 1989
Cowboy Artist Welcome to Weed California
The mural has power because of the role it plays as culture. The community mural de-alienates and delineates the individual in society. As a function of culture, the mural inspires symbolic experiences of an actualization process that reveal our potential as well as define our limitations. A subtle ‘leap of faith’ occurs as the viewer identifies with values and ideals expressed in the mural. While it does not circumvent the perceptual veil of the ego as it was once believed, the myths we live by are recast by the experience. Content in art has always shaped the individual in society. Whether the epic poem of ancient Greeks or the painting of the Modernist, art provides images of the self in transition. The artist searches for the hypothetical image that best fits the needs of individuation in a changing world.
As a second generation pop artist and muralist, the goal for community mural projects is to create a cultural icon that embodies the values associated with the location. Venice Beach Chorus Line symbolically incorporates the underlying community ideals of multiethnic camaraderie and homogeneity with the half-man half-animal characters of a transformation myth. The concept combines Cubist and Futurist compositional devices to fragment and animate cartoon-like figures in a street art medium. Venice Beach Chorus Line explores the kinetic potential of two-dimensional art as a way to capture the eclectic flavor and excitement of the Venice Boardwalk.
Perhaps it is utopian folly to assume there is common ground for peaceful coexistence in society. Nevertheless, this is the underlying assumption of the aesthetically determined community art thesis. Researching and defining emerging features in the community and representing them symbolically in public art creates a culture-rich environment with the potential to reconcile cultural differences and allow for cultural exchanges within pluralistic society. Political and social expression in aesthetically determined community art relies on the premise that the transformative cultural experience has power as a mediating and integrative force. Art mediates between different classes and subcultures within the community, and between the community and all of society. The community (and society as a whole) develops by recognizing how its ideals and values compare to others that are similarly expressing implied belief systems through art or other cultural venues in the public arena.
Collection of essays including: “New Cultural Paradigm: Community Art at the End of the Culture War”