The DACA program was a program that was signed by president Obama administration that allowed undocumented people who arrived to the U.S. as children to received a temporary social security number and a work permit. This program allowed over 800,000 immigrants to come out of the shadows and finally begin living the American Dream. They have now become our teachers our doctors our engineers, and with the decision of Trump's administration to remove the Dream Act, he is also removing the dreams of 800,00 people that over the last few year have been able to receive and education, they have paid all their taxes, they work, they help the American community because although they weren't born here, all they know is this country, besides that, it was not their choice to migrate to the United States, they did not take that decision. Now with the removal of the Dream Act thousand of these beneficiaries will go back to living in the shadows. That is why I wanted to create a piece that showed that they are not alone. I as an American citizen will fight for those who are scared to step out in fear of deportation. I also wanted to incorporate the artistic inspiration of the pop art movement. Pop art was highly seen in American artist and I wanted to explore their perspective of the American culture. Roy Lichtenstein is one of the most recognized pop art artist. He was an American pop artist that used the pop culture as the main focus of his paintings. This made his work controversial, and a lot of the population would criticize his work. A lot of his art resembled comic strips and cartoon which is what I wanted to imitate in my piece of art. One of his most famous paintings is, "Popeye". The piece contain Popeye and his rival Bluto. People say that he used this way of art to communicate that he does not care about what the critics say. In a way this resembles what I was to do with my work where art is used as a response to actions of other people.
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Incorporating the DACA program in my art was my main focus. All the decisions I made surrounded the Dream Act theme/concept. At first I was skeptical about referencing Donald Trump because of how controversial he has been and because I did not want to offend any supporters, and it's important to keep in mind that offending someone was never my intention. I wanted to portray the perspective of my own culture and how we feel when we get attacked by the president of the people. I also wanted to show that even when certain people don't want us to succeed, we will succeed. I created three different ideas all revolving the same concept. This is seen to the right.
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First I began by painting the background a bright red. The colors used in each of the canvases are used for a reason. First of all red represents the republican party and also red is found in the American flag. Also, the color red is sometimes seen as color of fear and error. I then sketched the face of the person as well as the speak bubble where I would write things that this person has said to the immigrants of this country. I then proceeded with the hair, this part was definitely the one that would make the "anonymous" person not so anonymous. Once the first canvas was done I began by adding the blue background to the second canvas. Getting the right shade of blue was quite difficult because I did not want it to be such a rich dark blue color yet I still wanted to resemble the American Flag color. Once that was spot on I sketched the top bubble where I would put the title of dreamers. Then with white paint I sketched the graduate. The graduate represents those dreamers whose dream is to graduate and that rebuttals the argument that the person from canvas 1 has said about them and their community. Then I painted the butterflies. The butterflies symbolize the immigrant community. Lastly I did the last canvas of the tryptic and for this one I just wrote the statement of Defend DACA for the audience to have an interaction with the piece and also interact with the cause.
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To the right there is swatches of the multiple different trial that it took for me to get that perfect blue for the background of the second canvas. The different swatches are also labeled from 1 to 9, this shows the ranking that I gave these colors. The reason why I decided to use swatch number one for my background is because it was the closest color that resembled the American flag color and also, it was light enough to create that contrast among the dreamer and the background.
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