Soul Cages

"Soul Cages"

                   Back in 1995, I visited the Cork City Gaol in Ireland.  The ghosts of long gone political prisoners still lingered amid the scribblings on the walls. I captured the words of one haunting poem with my camera.  Years later, I found a place for it...
(Materials: tea bags, photography, acrylic paint, and paper)

"Bloody Sunday: 1972"

    This work is a memorial to those massacred in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. I remember finding photos of all the victims, (most no more than 17 yrs. old).  I tried to focus on each face; carefully arranging the lines and shadows that somehow would combine to represent a unique individual.   Each  life cut short by politics;  by religious ideology;  by misplaced imperialism, etc.  I thought of my son at 17 yrs. old and thought what a bloody waste...

 Materials: tea bags, charcoal, ink, acrylics and type face.