In the book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild ventures deep into the heartland of the nation's political right to explore how the conservative white working class sees America.
To some extent she could have modeled her book after my father, who prayed before every meal, always ending with the words, “Forgive us wherein we fail thee.” He was born on a small farm in Bradford, Tennessee, to poor parents whose abuses were carried out in the name of fundamentalist religion. He came of age in the 1950s, married at 21, became a father at 23, and prided himself on his work ethic and religious fortitude.
Hochschild describes how the white working class have become marginalized by flat or falling wages, rapid demographic change, a government that they believe hurts instead of helping blue collar workers and liberal culture that mocks their faith and patriotism. In turn they have become more entrenched into their belief and commitment to church, community and their distrust of authority, especially government. With compassion and empathy, she discovers the narrative that gives meaning and expression to their lives, and which explains their political convictions.
In the 1960s as societal norms began to shift—along with the basic tenets of morality as my father knew them—he became confused and puzzled. He was no longer on the front lines of what he knew to be right and true; in this new and strange culture that was emerging, his views were considered outdated, even ignorant, and his ideas about women, marriage, and people of color, ideas that had been unchallenged, were suddenly considered misogynistic, homophobic, and racist.
He became volatile when his “safe” Teamsters Union job was outsourced overseas, and his wages were no longer stable. The loss of status as a wage earner and his disappointment in himself as a man of God, who had unsuccessfully attempted to become a Baptist minister, led to profound feelings of failure, anxiety, and a descent into sex addiction, depression, and, at the end of his life, severe mental illness.
This is not just the story of an uneducated factory worker raising a family in rural Tennessee, who watches as his job disappears and the culture shifts toward the unknown. It is also the story of a portion of the American right, teetering on the brink of societal divide. It is in the crosshairs of the personal and the universal that this exhibition takes a page from the book of a working-class southern man, and by laying it wide open, displays a visual narrative about the division of our times.
The digital mixed-media pieces in the series draws inspiration from European and Latin American paintings of the 13th to 17th centuries*, contemporary cultural and social commentaries, and psychological, and religious and historical texts.
I initially conceived of this project in late 2012. It was to be a personal exploration that would shed light on the longstanding tension, pain and anger that plagued my relationship with my father. He had just been diagnosed with Lewey Body Dementia, and I knew we didn’t have much time left.
At some point during the creation of the series, I read Arlie Russell Hochschild's book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. The book was published in 2016, and was an exploration of the factors that led to the rise of the far-right ideology.
In her book, Hochschild elucidates what my father likely felt, but was unable to express: that he, along with so many others of his blue-collar working class, was alarmed by the changing societal norms of the late twenty-first century. Finding their traditional, conservative views “recast” as outdated, racist and discriminatory, they began to feel themselves victimized and oppressed, and they responded by aligning with an increasingly far right ideology whose views on religion, politics, and family values more closely represented their own. It was after reading Hochschild's book that this series took a slightly different turn. My father’s life, I saw more clearly than ever, was the unsurprising result of the time period and his socioeconomic demographic, making it, therefore, a perfect template for a larger cultural exploration. Forgive Us Wherein We Fail Thee is that exploration.
I am not an apologist for my father or his generation. It would be fair to say that we did not share many values, views or opinions, but I also do not seek to vilify him or his generation. When he died in 2016, any chance that we might reconcile died with him.
In my work as a therapist, I saw families deeply divided by disagreements. Twenty years later, deep divides in politics and culture, and the heated and sometimes violent clashes that result, are becoming the norm. Division, whether in families or in society, rarely has an end game; rather, it further entrenches us, making compromise nearly impossible, and reconciliation a distant, unreachable dream. My hope for this series is that it will foster dialogue, and perhaps, in some small way, bridge a divide.
PROCESS STATEMENT
Television did not come to rural West Tennessee until the 1950s. People talked fondly the first tv experience they had, watching a boxing match through a neighbors window with several others because everyone could not fit into the house.
Once a tv was in the house of this generation, it was only turned off when they went to sleep. Television evolved from 3 network channels to 24 hour satellite broadcast, but this pattern of a constant tv stream never changed.
However with sweeping cultural changes, television brought images of change into the home that challenged accepted rural societal norms into the house. Reaction to these developments were confusion, fear and anger. While TV brought these disturbing images into the house, it also provided a way of escape and comfort in the form of western movies, sports and religious programs, especially gospel singing for escape and comfort.
A child walks through a field of crucified family members, who brought
suffering upon themselves by living by the codes of a harsh, unforgiving, and ill-informed belief system. Utility poles as crosses reflect the emerging industrial society in the South, and every changing culture attempting to both fight and embrace modernity. The image very loosely pays tribute to Lazaro Pardo de Lago’s Franciscan Martyrs of Japan (1630).
On the other hand, one can not be free from these desires until one acknowledges them and enters into a dialogue with them. Religion has traditionally counseled believers to withdraw from aggressive, erotic, or egotistical states of mind, replacing them with purer states of devotion, humility, or piety, but this leaves the person’s issues unaddressed and empowered.
In this piece I am showing this push and pull. A wife and a possible lover both stand near the central character of the piece, both are literal and metaphorical. The lover represents the chase for gratification that can not be met and the wife, the stoic devotion which also does not serve him well.
The background is filled with family self-martyrdom, nude women, some on crosses themselves, some bound, all suffering, sheep falling and Mary watching. To the side is a group of boxes or blocks with symbols for money, patriotism, cowboys and western culture, time and paranoia.
The shirtless man intentionally ambitious is vulnerable and unprotected while at the same time defiant, angry and masculine. While being vunerable, he clings to his western hat and western
mythology of the strong independent self-made man. The image of the cowboy on the TV reinforces this idea that he is holding on to an old vision of America and self all the while a clock in front of the image informs us that time is running out. The image on the TV is a famous image of a civil rights protester being attacked by a counter protester who is using the flag as a weapon. Even though this is an image from the 60s, it parallels the continuing struggle in contemporary society. Time Magazine’s famous Is God Dead issue is on the floor by his chair, as is The Autobiography of Malcom X, Alan Watt’s book Taboo and The Autobiography of a Yogi. He sees his religion under attack, violence in the streets, and new and unfamiliar concepts and identities rising up to challenge everything he was taught. During my father’s early and middle adulthood, to him it appeared the world was falling apart. He was afraid, confused and angry. He feared losing his factor job to outsourcing to Mexico due to cheap labor. The very floor he is standing on is a photograph I took of Mexican tile in a cathedral in Oaxaca.
Like the family in the Thomas Hovenden’s painting Breaking Home Ties, the family in this piece sees the son leaving home as a sad event since he is leaving the family farm where the very traditional and religious family has resided for several generations. He too is clearly distressed by this event.
Like many, he had to leave the rural life to find work. Many found themselves in the great northern industrial cities like Detroit and Chicago earning money, but alien to the culture and sad to be away. These factors along with pressure of their families to move home often lead them to take jobs paying much lower and with no opportunity.
The pressure to live in our culture and near our family is universal. From educated families in urban settings to the rural community, there is often pressure to remain near home, even if this results in loss of dreams, career and a journey that might lead to a different life than even we had imagined.
Love in a Crowded Place, 60" x 42", digital mixed-media ( acrylic, spray paint, paper, print ), 2019
The origin of this image is loosely based on Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with Ermine. In this case the ermine is replaced with a goat, which represents agricultural society, is slang for someone who has lost favor, and is a representation of evil in the Bible.
The floor is a photo I took of Mexican tile in a cathedral in Oaxaca, Mexico. As the rural areas of the South began the shift from agriculture to industry, industry became the foundation of rural income and, in some cases, the route to middle class status. The industry owners quickly realized that they could move the factories to Mexico and save money, or use this threat against the workers to pay minimum wages. Thus the “foundation” of financial security is based on something that will not last.
I recently found handwritten sermon notes in my father’s small spiral notebook. Almost all of the writing focused on sin, punishment and forgiveness. In this notebook the one sentence that stood out was “Nothing But Blood Will Satisfy Holy Law”.
This image is of a man trapped in what the Buddhists refer to as the “Hell Realm.” In the Helm Realm people are tortured by anxiety or rage, but do not recognize their torture as a product of their own mind. They believe they are tortured by outside forces over which they have no control. Here the manual laborer loads boxes on trucks all day. He hates the job and blames everyone including himself for his station in life, which he believes is beneath him.
The boxes in this piece represent literal boxes, but also are a metaphor for personal baggage, including anxiety, fear, worry about money, inappropriate thoughts of sex, paranoia, lack of understanding of national and cultural change, religious rigidity, and family schism. The falling boxes represent baggage that, unaddressed, falls endlessly upon us.
Creator and Destroyer, 84” x 80”, digital mixed-media ( acrylic, spray paint, paper, print ), 2020
No, 64" x 36", digital mixed-media ( acrylic, spray paint, paper, print ) 2020
Contemplation, digital mixed-media ( acrylic, spray paint, paper, print ) 2019
The primary women in my father’s childhood were strict, angry, religious fundamentalists who believed everything was a sin that resulted Hell. Not studying the Bible or working hard was “doing the devil’s work.”
