What is Lifestyles Of The Ignored?

Peace everybody.

It's 7:01p, and normally I don't blog on workdays because I fear one day my work mode will spill over into my other mode. But a few good leads have come my way in regards to my artwork and the project as a whole, so right now I am more prone to look at things as a positive. I was thinking this morning of how close I came to chuckin' it all in just last week, then The Assistance came. It's just a beginning, but everything on Earth started somehow, somewhere right?

Anyway I figured I would give everyone a brief glimpse of my project. The title of this particular project is called Lifestyles of the Ignored, and it is more than just the homeless, although the spark came from a picture of two homeless people. The idea just came to me, I was at work Thanksgiving 2006 with nothing to do. My department, which was dispatch, was virtually on call for the day. So seeing that I would be like Little Jack Horner, sitting in the corner with nothing to do, I told my acting supervisor that I will bring my pencil and sketch pad to work. She said "fine". She was one of those types that was proud of her hippieness(lol), but we became great friends before I left the job in April 2007. She also has one of my prize pictures in her possession as well.

Moving on, as I sat in a secluded area with nothing but my computer and some food in front of me I whipped out the pen and pad and went to work. The picture above was the end result.

I was very reluctant to show the picture, an example of my extreme shyness, but I braved it out and tacked the picture onto my cubicle. Then one young lady walked up to my cubicle and commented on the picture, and it took off from there. I went on a pastel binge, and since I was working around 10 to 11 hours a day anyway, I started smugglin' my stuff in the workplace and stashin' it in my desk. After 5:30p passed, it was on at my cubicle..

The real significance of this time period was that before that Thanksgiving evening, I had not touched a pastel, drawing utensil or paintbrush for 14 yrs. Yes 14 YEARS.... When I put away my artwork back in '92, I had no thought of going back to it. But my mom found out I was quitting, and asked for all of the remaining craft paint and dye I had stashed.

I guess it took a cause or something I felt passionately about to regenerate my interest. Before that time I was confined to doing portraits and stuff other people liked, but it was not my voice.

When I left the job, I had garnered the attention of even those people that I had antagonized. I had ticked them off by refusing to humiliate myself to some of the most Steppin Fetchit tactics to impose on a customer service representative. They hated my guts, but adored my work. So on my last day I wrote a long letter that promised my co employees that they will see a project entitled "The Forgotten". But a couple of things happened. One, the job banned lil' ol' me from entering the premises anymore, so I could not see my former co employees.

Second, after long spells of contemplating I came to the conclusion that poor people are not forgotten, but simply ignored. This government will always ignore the poor and downtrodden, regardless of whoever sleeps in the Master's bedroom of the White House. I will give Reagan some dap on the fact that he publicly expressed his dislike of poor people, while others smile and act as if they care.

I'll explain more later..... Take care.