Complicated Shadows, Civil War Monuments  Digital print  25 x 25″  $550

My artwork’s content is found in culture.  I look to current events, popular culture, and music for my subject matter.  In the search I use found text, found objects, and found images. In this inkjet print, Complicated Shadows, I used images of Confederate monuments.  I included the names of the artists and the monuments.  The destruction of the statues will call attention to the injustices. But as James Baldwin wrote, “people are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.”

I used the text of Bob Dylan because he was influenced by a Civil War era poet, Henry Timrod, when he wrote, “The moon gives light and shines by night…”. (From When the Deal Goes Down)  The setting for the statues is a moonlight and shadowed environment.

Janet Mikolajczyk