JOE-BLO SENIOR I

70"X60"

1994

"Heartland" is my current work in progress inspired by the environment in which I live, the heartland of this country. This cycle moves the everyday hero theme from loving to grotesque. I am interested here in a mix of want-to-be self-image/collective self perception, a desired metamorphosis which never takes place: people or situations not becoming the pictures they imagine themselves to be. What fascinates me is the strange cohabitation between abundance and neglect in our culture: how the abundance of space, freedom, choice and its resulting generosity can live side by side with a seeming inability to manage such riches, which then slip into a mix of potential and failure, frustration, anger, abuse, desperation, and the hideous. The integration of the heavy frame within the drawings, facilitated by the shaping of the surfaces through the handmade paper, are to exaggerate the longing for objectification of the self-image: if there is a picture then it must be important... The drawings vary in sizes from large to more intimate, with the purpose of - when installed - awkwardly overcrowding a room, much like a haphazard collection of family pictures would overcrowd a living room wall. People and places in these drawings are fictional, composites of realities encountered in my quotidial world.

"Big Daddy Doe"

"Kris Kringle Ready for the Heartland"
87" X 66"
2003

"Dixie-from the Heartland" 30"X24" 2000		"Booboo-from the Heartland" 30"X24" 2000