A Texas Thistle

Image development for a poster. Theme to address the alienating and discouraging situation afflicting humans crossing arbitrary borders. Families divided, treated as enemies, alien invaders. Laura and I worked to reveal something beautiful, something isolated and along, but still presenting wonder. The Texas Thistle, Cirsium texanum, with its fine spines to bring a prickle to our hands, manifests it fervent growth in a delicately unfurling flower. spines softened, colors iridescent and thick. A subject and a medium for play, a lonely beautiful object, trapped and connected.

ALIEN, something unknown, frightening and challenging to a way of life.

Remembering influences, and the current under the film, our fear of the other.

The final poster is to be offset printed in just two colors, cyan and orange, contrast.

Distorted by its isolation, the beauty is smeared and transformed, thinned out.

Protected from within, isolated from without.

The final poster sent for production brings the child back into focus. A space of a dream of a memory, something to escape into, or perhaps escape through. A shared space of connection between humans in a region of the earth with a shared beauty, communal wonder at the vibrancy of life. Share and be free.