Thursday, June 17, 2010

REM Artist Statement

In my painting I was trying to show the difference between the Leavers and the Takers. Throughout the book My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn Ishmael kept talking about the difference between the Leaver and Taker lifestyles and how the Takers should live and be more like the Leavers. I have two sides in my painting one is the Leaver side and the other one is the Taker side. Each side has many things that each represent something related to the book or stories in the book.

On the left side I put Julie and she represents the Takers because she is a Taker. In the Taker side I put a lock and key because the Takers put the food under lock and key and that's why we have to have a job so we can have money to buy food that was free a long time ago. Also I have the word "Dystopia" because with the Takers ruling we are living in a dystopia. Dystopia is "a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding." I have a cell phone to represent technology because now we have a lot of technology compared to when Leavers lived. I also have money to represent the wealth that we have now. The world with the person at the top represents how the Takers want to be the rulers of the whole world. I put a sad face because we are sad, not always but we are sadder than the Leavers because of the way we live and the way we are. We don’t walk around and see everyone smiling and laughing. We see more people crying or with a sad face.

On the right side I put Ishmael sitting down and that side represents the Leaver side. On the Leaver side I wrote "Utopia" because the Leavers were the opposite of the Takers. Utopia is "any visionary system of political or, social perfection." I think that even though the Leavers were not perfect they lived in a Utopia because they knew how to live unlike the Takers. I have a group of stick people and they represent how the Leavers are more together and they help each other out. I have a happy face because the Leavers are happy, they aren't always happy because they aren't perfect, but they are happier than the Takers.

I didn’t really like this book because most of the book it was about Julie and Ishmael talking and it got boring just reading their entire conversation. I thought it was interesting sometimes when Ishmael told Julie those stories and gave her examples because it helped me understand better what he was talking about. This book made me look at some things from different perspectives like in the School Daze chapters. I used to think of school as just being a place to learn but I never looked at it as a place the takers make us be in so that when we are out of college we get a job so we can get money so that we can buy food. All this is because of food that is under lock and key.

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