Barbie Meets G.I. Joe

I have a piece in an exhibit opening next week. The exhibit is titled Barbie Meets G.I. Joe, and it’s at the Koehnline Museum of Art at Oakton Community College in Des Plains, IL. Dates for the exhibit are September 6-October 19, 2007.
The opening reception is Thursday, September 6 from 5-8 p.m.

The show is an installation by Patrick Miceli, a Chicago-based artist who makes really interesting work which deals with pop culture and consumerism. For this project, he gave nearly life-sized drawings of G.I. Joe or Barbie to over 40 artists, and asked them to respond to the figures as they saw fit. The figures, made by the individual artists, make up the exhibit.

I received a G.I. Joe figure to work on. Here’s what I did with it.


I actually made the piece a couple of years ago, when the war in Iraq was in it’s early stages. I covered the entire figure in actual U.S. dollar bills (which cost me $67). I then appropriated the Halliburton logo, painting it onto G.I. Joe’s chest to resemble a chest wound. Halliburton is one of the private corporations (formerly led by Dick Cheney) awarded contracts to support the Iraq war. I changed the text to head ‘Hasbroburton’(Hasbro is the toy company which makes G.I. Joe).

Here’s a close-up, making it easier to see the logo.


Barbie Meets G.I. Joe
Koehnline Museum of Art
Oakton Community College
1600 E. Golf Rd.
Des Plains, IL.
60016

Dates for the exhibit are September 6-October 19, 2007.
The opening reception is Thursday, September 6 from 5-8 p.m.
Gallery hours Monday-Friday 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

Koehnline Museum web site