Nowhere to Hide
This piece depicts a homeless man resting on a public bench in the cold winter months and represents the greater issue of homelessness and poverty in Philadelphia. We began this project with a presentation from teacher Sharon about poverty in Philadelphia and how it affects different demographics.
After some research, I was inspired by the image above and decided to recreate it using linocut. I sketched the outline of the man on the bench onto tracing paper and simplified the image to its basic shapes. I then transferred the sketch from the tracing paper to a 4x6 lino block and used a sharpie to solidify the sketch. I continued by carving away everything but the outline of the shapes using carving tools of various sizes. Once that was completed, I printed several different copies of the linocut and then I picked one to expand by a factor of about 250%.
After deciding to duplicate the image, the piece was split into 12 pieces of paper across a large piece of cardboard leftover from the packaging of the new TVs that were recently installed throughout the upper school. I added color to the image by using yellow, grey, blue, and purple oil pastels to contrast the homeless man with the unforgiving environment surrounding him. Finally, I glued the pieces to the cardboard and used mod podge as the final coat on top.
When observing this piece, I hope viewers are reminded of the harshness of homelessness we so often ignore and are moved to fight poverty in any way they can.
