Artist Statement Demo

Artist Statement:

This Piece was created to show the chaos and struggles facing the youth in the East Salinas Community. I focused on service learning outcome #1 self and community awareness. I made the house to look like a trailer, and I have blood spattered all over the door, with a bullet hole in the middle and boarded up windows. I did this to represent the gang violence that goes all throughout the community. The cone coming up through the roof of the double-wide is a hurricane that I wanted to be the symbol for the destruction and uncontrollable spiral that the people of East Salinas face. And in the middle of it all are the children, who see everything, and are completely stuck in the middle of all this chaos.

I like to use this piece to think of how little I have to complain about I have had a great childhood, and these kids are stuck struggling to just make it by, with very little help. The element of time also comes into play here. Because it is the youth who are stuck in this vortex, unless we fix all the issues in Salinas this problem will continue to spiral until the very end.

The reason the hurricane is from the inside out is to show how terrible the home life is. I just think about a couple of stories of some of the home conditions that these kids face, and it really makes me sad. I had a girl who had a bathtub as her bed, and a boy who shares his home with 27 other people. I could not imagine trying to live that kind of life, but, here are these kids in the center of it all, who can just sit and watch.