Emily

It took me an unusually long period of time to first decide what to do for my mask.  As not a very artistic person I found it very difficult to convey a message through paint on a mask.  However, despite this shortcoming, I was able to complete it and am satisfied with what I have done.  Roy Lichtenstein is one of my favorite artists.  His works try to imitate the perfect, and interfere the perfect with the sorrows (or imperfections) of reality.  The left side of my mask is my interpretation of Lichtenstein’s work, Girl with Hair Ribbon.  I wanted to capture the sense of the “Perfect” in America , how Americans strive for something that is simply too much and how the values of Americans get lost with the search.  The blonde hair, blue eyes image of the perfect woman is very eminent in society today, though it may not seem as prominent.  The tear adds the subtle hint of reality.  The blue on the right side is supposed to represent the ocean, another side of reality, as it attempts to wash away the perfect image of the woman. 

The first line of the writing, “the melody haunts my reverie” comes from another Lichtenstein work, The Melody Haunts My Reverie.  The second line comes from a book called Slaughter-house-five written by one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut.  I chose these two lines because I felt the bird’s song “poo-tee-weet?”  ( a response to a massacre in war, as there is nothing else to say) perfectly interrupts the dream, or “reverie,” of the woman and thus American society.  It again brings her back to reality.