Blue Deer with Dying Sun

Mixed Media
17.5” x 12” x 3”
2012

I made this small wall-mounted relief from sheet copper, layering it with found objects, drawings, and stencil imagery until it became a kind of dense, weathered landscape. Prominently emerging from the sky is a baby deer skull in pursuit of an American Eagle, both of which are adorned with a vaguely native style motif drawn with colored pencil. Set into the centerpiece is a shadowbox holding a miniature junkyard scene with an old car, a nod to Rust Belt decay and American car culture, and the sense of wasteland that stretches through the Southwest. At the bottom, a red circle salvaged from a wire spool anchors another small pile of junk, this one holding a fragment of Native American pottery. Red graphic telephone poles cut across the copper to give the whole piece depth and distance, like a horizon line. I can't fully explain the Native American undertone that runs through this piece, only that it feels tied to something I'm circling around here—American identity, the myth, history and wreckage of the American landscape, and whatever it actually means to be American.