Paintings & Drawings
'Bird Shat Spectacular' is a bold push back against conventional standards of art by incorporating a large variety of mediums such as acrylic paint, paper collage, spray paint, pencil, colored pencil, sharpies, highlighter, ink, hairspray, coffee, saliva, and a very gracious pigeon. This work serves to reflect the cluttered, jumbled nature of the modern world, while alluding to the exploitation and manipulation present in both avante-garde regimes and broader systematic & political structures.
This piece is heavily inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and Pop Art Movement, and holds themes that call out our society’s attempts to erase African American activists, artists, and innovators. Some of Masel’s favorite sections of the piece include the decapitated Jean-Michel Basquiat in the bottom left corner which represents the current Basquiat-clone epidemic, and goes to show that even the most iconic African American artist is still subjected to white-washing, cultural appropriation, and erasure. Another favorite is the 1960s housewife attempting to wash the words of Huey P. Newton, a founding member of the Black Panther Party. This is meant to invoke the audience to ask questions about the intersectionality between marginalized groups like race and gender. The last highlight in the top left corner invites West Virginians to let go of prejudices and open their eyes to communities that are also exploited by their government and larger corporations. From the mountains of West Virginia to the Mountains of Congo, the truth behind mass resource extraction has been swept under the rug in order to continue fueling global corporations and the rest of the world’s innovations. This challenges racial biases, brings awareness to some similarities we share with people from across the globe, and to remind West Virginia that “Injustice everywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” - MLK