Provocative Painting Puts Pressure on Politicians

On Wednesday, March 21st, students from first-year Professor Eric Hongisto's second semester painting class took on the task of painting a mural in the space reserved for such artistic projects outside Crossroads Café. The artwork began with classroom brainstorming on the heady topic of political and social unrest in the United States, and what could be represented symbolically on a canvas to convey the students' sense of the current political climate. The mural now displayed on the first floor of the University Center is a first for many of the students involved, and the first time Hongisto, 33, has worked on a mural at USF.

The mural is a collaborative effort to visually arrest onlookers with striking words and images, like the bloodied head of Vice President Dick Cheney under the words, "These Colors Don't Run. But They Bleed." Other students chose to highlight the connection between war and the relentless drive of consumer capitalism represented by hamburgers and Hummers. Students on one side of the hallway painted a young child in a tank running over other children, possibly symbolizing the way young people are taught to glorify the same violence that can ultimately kill them.

One member of the artistic troupe, Fiamma Giger, found the group effort both interesting and challenging. Giger, a 21 year-old Visual Arts major, said she was looking forward to seeing what other students will do with the mural. Professor Sharon Siskin's second semester drawing class will take over the mural and do work in response to the initial painting her class has done. Giger spent her mural time painting an assembly line of t-shirts reminiscent of a sweatshop.

These forms of artistic expression provide students with a chance to exercise their first amendment rights to free speech, however provocative. It will be interesting to see in the current climate of fear and repression whether the students will come under criticism, or even legal pressure, for depicting the Vice President with a gaping, mortal head wound. With the opportunity to speak one's mind fast diminishing, protest murals like this might soon become a thing of the past, unless the idealism of student activism can be met with the full support of those in a position to end the march toward tyranny. That spark of idealistic fervor is at the heart of American culture, ingrained from the founding of a rebellious and free nation, through the abolitionist movement and the horrific war it ignited, on up to the present day, when concerned citizens throughout this nation are banding together against the installation of a police state on our own shores.

The Art of War

How can I describe American Culture to someone who isn’t familiar with it?

The other day, I was in a friend’s living room, as their neighbor’s six year-old son sat in a trance in front of a 50-inch widescreen TV. His parents were nowhere to be seen. The child was completely oblivious to everything around him. His entire focus was dedicated to navigating his digital self through the mean-streets of the latest Grand Theft Auto videogame. The object of this game is to steal lots of cars and to commit as many acts of violence as possible. His character ran the streets beating people to the brink of death, robbing them of their possessions, and running over innocent pedestrians in stolen vehicles. He played for an hour or so until he became bored. He got up from his seat on the couch, he didn’t say any goodbyes, and he wondered out the door. Nobody seemed to notice him leave.

I thought of this boy, as I came across USF Art students working on a mural outside of Crossroads café last Wednesday. The piece was in its early stages, but its strong political themes were already becoming clear. What particularly brought the boy to my mind was a section of the mural where the artist painted a military tank in a harmless shade of pink. Using cut out photos from magazines, the artist has an ecstatic young boy driving the tank over the heads of babies, all of them smiling. The tank becomes a toy and its victims are happy. War is now a game.


The U.S. has fought a lot of wars in the mass media age, but none of them have been on U.S. soil. Instead they have been fought on our TV and computer screens and in the pages of newspapers and magazines. The average American comes into contact with war through images and words. We fight communists, Nazis, terrorists, enemy combatants, insurgents, or simply put “bad guys.” Thousands of Americans have died fighting these “bad guys” and they are recognized as heroes who died for their country. Many, many more “bad guys”, “bad guys” family members, and innocent bystanders who happened to be in the area of perceived “bad guys” have died as well. They remain nameless, and become statistics that are tallied during the nightly news in between commercials.

As technology improves, and our appetite for reality-based entertainment continues to grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. I think of that little boy playing his videogame, and I wonder if he can still tell the difference between the digital people dying in his game and the real people dying on TV.