The Stars and Abraham
Eight hand-made, multi-tier boxes with glass, enamel, mylar, graphite, and digital transfer.
The Stars and Abraham
I always liked Lincoln and I’m trying to figure out why. I know I always liked his image: the stovepipe hat, weathered face, odd, lanky body. He represented for me as a youngster a knowing, comforting figure which was instilled in us in grade school. This persona is interesting because he was also one of the most hated presidents (second to the current idiot) in the nation’s history during his tenure during the civil war. He was also the most photographed (advent of photography) and one of the most canonized symbols in American history. With all of the photographs of him he seems more ‘real’ but also with the quality of early photography and its blurry distortions, somewhat ethereal, mysterious and still to me.
His image has been appropriated for a wide variety of needs today and his status is usually held as a recent profit to many. He has grown to such proportion that it’s hard to tell what he might have really been like. It seems Lincoln is there for the taking, in a sense, to interpret as you will or to use for one’s own needs like many other popular icons – Jesus and the US constitution come to mind.
He tended to follow his personal instincts and took his time with the decisions he made before coming to a conclusion on issues both monumental and even the trivial. Not all of these actions were based purely on principles of morality as is often thought or hoped.
I both made up and tweaked existing constellations (there are plenty of stars to choose from) into problematic or incongruous entities. So Lincoln the mediator and ‘Great Emancipator’, religious skeptic and embodiment of what’s ‘right and true’, as an aberration quietly looks on from the sides…
michael paulus
The Stars and Abraham
I always liked Lincoln and I’m trying to figure out why. I know I always liked his image: the stovepipe hat, weathered face, odd, lanky body. He represented for me as a youngster a knowing, comforting figure which was instilled in us in grade school. This persona is interesting because he was also one of the most hated presidents (second to the current idiot) in the nation’s history during his tenure during the civil war. He was also the most photographed (advent of photography) and one of the most canonized symbols in American history. With all of the photographs of him he seems more ‘real’ but also with the quality of early photography and its blurry distortions, somewhat ethereal, mysterious and still to me.
His image has been appropriated for a wide variety of needs today and his status is usually held as a recent profit to many. He has grown to such proportion that it’s hard to tell what he might have really been like. It seems Lincoln is there for the taking, in a sense, to interpret as you will or to use for one’s own needs like many other popular icons – Jesus and the US constitution come to mind.
He tended to follow his personal instincts and took his time with the decisions he made before coming to a conclusion on issues both monumental and even the trivial. Not all of these actions were based purely on principles of morality as is often thought or hoped.
I both made up and tweaked existing constellations (there are plenty of stars to choose from) into problematic or incongruous entities. So Lincoln the mediator and ‘Great Emancipator’, religious skeptic and embodiment of what’s ‘right and true’, as an aberration quietly looks on from the sides…
michael paulus
