Arlo Ramos-Wilson: December 2022

Sunday, December 11, 2022

Cabinet of Curiosity

False Family

Styrofoam, fabric, wood, clay, wood glue, plastic dolls, gingerbread-man toy

8x16x14

This Piece was made in response to a story about Alex Shear, a collector of vintage toys who lost his connections to friends and family in favor of his collection. The piece is meant to represent this by have the central clay figure represent Shear and show how strange and hollow looking a family scene looks like without other people. The toy figure are meant to look out of place and poorly put together to show that these objects cannot and are not meant to replace people and will be unable to take the place of a real human connection. The couch is supposed to represent a place for family to gather but it has fallen apart and the figure connections to others has been severed

Memento

Curtains Fall

White ink, wood, fabric, wood glue

4x2.5x2.5 inches

This piece was made in the memory of my good family friend Otis and the last conversation we shared before he passed away in 2019. At a family gathering in 2019 just a month before he passed and we shared a conversation at the dining room table discussing the future in which he gave me comforting words to ease my uncertainty as a neared the end of my senior year in high school. I used the white ink and fabric to mimic that of the table we sat at and the warped shape to represent the uncertainty I felt as well as the organic flow of the conversation. The fabric is also meant to serve as curtains on peaking slightly to representing the ending of our interactions in this life, but that it was also a satisfying conclusion.

Figurative Sculpture

Chin-up

Clay, black ink, white ink, yellow ink, brown ink, wood

4x5x4 inches

Intimidation

clay, blue ink, black ink, yellow ink, white ink, wood, nails

4x9x3.5 inches

The figures Chin-up and Intimidation are a set made to demonstrate the growing inequity between police officers and people of color in the United States as well as the disproportionate amount violence that people of color face from the police. Intimidation depicts a police officer enraged with that anger outfaced and directed generally sitting on a crumbling but daunting. Chin-up depicts the fear that people of color have towards the police, and the need to submit and carefully follow direction so that they may live to see another day.

Statistics show that people of color are killed disproportionately by police officers. Even though half of all people killed by police officers are White, Hispanic and especially Black people are killed at a higher rate despite their lower overall population. In recent years we have seen how trigger happy and violent the police have been with multiple instance of them killing unarmed citizens or those who pose no threat to the police, with again the majority of those killed being people of color. This pattern has caused declining mental and general health in people of color especially in the next few months following these killings in people throughout the state.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/25/956177021/fatal-police-shootings-of-unarmed-black-people-reveal-troubling-patterns

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/05/how-unjust-police-killings-damage-the-mental-health-of-black-americans/