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Explanation of Imagery
The Work
This piece uses the symbolic meaning within the flag to underscore what this time of protest, resistance to oppression, as well as resistance to change stirs inside of me: A black man, and a veteran. As a black man I have no choice but to wear my skin everyday, but as a military service member I was a volunteer. I chose to serve and wear my uniform every day of my enlistments. It was my choice to protect the country within which I thought I was living; one with a dark past that had found a path to light and become a leader in the rehabilitation of countries founded in injustice.
I feel so much gratitude for all of the voices (minority and majority alike) for speaking up; for holding the nose of the government in the mess that we have made of the words equality and justice.
I also feel more hopeless than ever. Hope seems foolish because it is only the disempowered majority (of all races) boldly speaking in favor of equality and justice, while the empowered minority clings to power and authority through legislation and inequitable enforcement of its laws.
Many people know that the red bars our American flag is for valor and hardiness, and to some represents the blood shed to establish our nation. The white symbolizes purity and innocence, a land yet uncorrupted as the lands were from where immigrants fled in search of a better life here in the United States. The blue, however, is often a forgotten mystery, or worse yet mis-attributed to be the blue of the sky. The blue however, is perhaps the most important color of all; the blue field represents vigilance, perseverance, and justice.
In the work, the words written inside the red bars require a boldness to acknowledge. They take courage to speak aloud. They require the valor, on which this country was founded, to evolve from being a message, to becoming policies, and ultimately change social idealism into a real national community.
The white stripes no longer span the flag smooth, clean and uninterrupted. They are swirled with shadows and of white shapes. Our country has lost the purity and innocence of the idealism that launched a revolution. At best our innocence has become a willful ignorance led by arrogance, and is corrupted by the remaining echoes of Manifest Destiny.
The blue is faded and drawn of color in such a way that it only encompasses most of the stars of white. The colored stars and few white stars (now representing the diversity of people in America) have had their Justice stripped away; they persevere without justice. Their color and culture is eroded; bleeding into a field of white, desperately trying to assimilate into a system that only evolves to shore-up support for status-quo.
Not everything is dark... https://www.flickr.com/gp/creativeabstracts/i79Gm4
Learn more... about the artist
Name of Work: It Will Take More Red to Repair Our Fade Blue (Includes Poetry)
The Flag- is called: The State of the Union Flag. (Work without Poetry)
Bio: Frank Johnson has worked himself from poverty to prosperity. Being born of black American parents, in New Jersey, during the mid 1970's he faced many of the hurdles commonplace for his demographic. When Frank was three months old his father was taken from he and his mother by gun violence in the workplace.
Frank's mother was soon thereafter diagnosed with a chronic disease preventing her from working. He is an only child raised via his mother's tenacity and his own perspective that his situation in life was only temporary.
Recognizing early on that it would only be through acceptance into the dominant culture that he could succeed, he set out to adopt cultural norms and mimic the behaviors of the dominant class. Reflecting on this he states,
" As early as middle school, my mother told me, I would need to work twice as hard to achieve half as much in this world. I accepted that the rules of success were different for me because of my "race" and got to work. Although the rules were inequitable, there were rules; and that was something with which I could work?"
Frank's efforts in middle and high school led to multiple college scholarship offers. Ultimately he chose Lafayette College over several traditionally black colleges because, to him, Lafayette better represented the larger world he was preparing to enter and it was more fiscally prudent.
He graduated Lafayette College with a BA in Studio Art; briefly studied painting under fellowship at the University of New Orleans. After only one year of study however, Frank entered the United States Air Force- serving for eight years. During which time he became an avid amateur photographer. He earned an honorable discharge in 2007.
Frank Johnson is a pet parent, a husband, and veteran. Frank Johnson is an American.