Gone But Never Forgotten

BKJ, Never Forget (2014)

I am BKJ and I am a Chicago street artist and the topic I chose to represent artistically is gun violence in Chicago. I chose this topic because it is something I see in my life all the time and I am sick of it and I want to have my voice heard and get the message out that this needs to end. With that being said, I first had to draw my art “The Lost Ones” about gun violence. I drew a dead person in the middle of my piece with bullet holes all over him and rays of light popping out toward an object that we think of when reminded of a certain event. For example, for my allusion to the murder of Trayvon Martin, I drew Skittles and Arizona iced tea. The background of the piece is light blue to symbolize the person ascending to heaven. There is a black border with white writing recording the names and the dates of each victim to show respect. Behind the person are words that read “never forget” because I feel that we should never forget any of the people lost to gun violence every day.

Most young people nowadays do not feel any pain when death is around them because they are used to it and have seen it throughout their lives, but I feel that gun violence is one of the most serious problems, not only in my hometown of Chicago, but everywhere. People are killed every day for no legitimate reason at all, and some of those victims could be family or friends. Gun violence has created a tragic situation for families to go through. I feel that you should not only care about this topic, but you should get up and do something to stop it such as educating the youth about gangs and violence; placing a 3 month waiting period on gun purchases; and having background checks before purchasing a gun. These are only three solutions, but we are smart people and probably have better ideas bottled up in our heads--today is the day to go out and make it happen. No matter how unreal you feel your idea is just remember it can never hurt to try; you'll be surprised where your ideas will take you. If you don't already think this is a problem, then maybe you should know that over the weekend of July 4th, 2013, there were 82 shootings in the Chicago area and 16 of those resulted in death. You should also know that so far this year, there have been about 201 murders. Another thing you should know specifically about our city is that “In 2012, it had 500 murders, the most of any city in the country; Chicago has been among the top three cities with the most murders since 1985” (Drew Desilver, Pew research center. Factank,July 14 2014, Web, 10/17/14) and Chicago had about 440 murders total, last year.

The medium I chose to bring attention to this issue is sticker paper. I used markers, sticker paper, and a printer so I could mass produce my message. I plan to make an initial image on a piece of paper and then get more of my design printed and actually stick them up around the city of Chicago to get my message out to the public. Like I said, I want to get my message across and you can't do that with only a blog post that not everyone will see, so I would put these up, and hopefully more people will see my message and get the point. I mainly want my art to be displayed in the city streets of Chicago--what better place than the heart of the problem, the streets? The reason I want it in the streets is so the public can see it and they will hopefully get my message and I could spark a change, one way or another.

My piece shows ethos because I am obviously credible to speak about this topic because I have seen it a lot throughout my life and actually three of the people I mentioned in my physical art piece are people that I knew very well. My piece appeals to logos because these are true events and they are facts. They people that I mentioned in my piece were actual victims of violence. And I feel that my message is pretty logical “stop killing people.” honestly not everyone agrees with this message but nonetheless it is a very logical statement and I feel that more people should start taking this message into account. Lastly I feel that my art piece has a very strong appeal to pathos because it is a very emotional topic for one and on the other hand we almost all can relate to this topic one way or another. Most of us have gone through the pain of losing a loved one to violence and that only enhances the emotional thoughts I am trying to provoke. I am trying to not only make people think about this topic but I am also trying to make they want to get up and do something about it.