On a striped white linen background, over sixty layered sewn collages of found and commercial fabric, digitally printed images, text, glass beads, hand-inked text, embroidered text, and carved bone and pewter charms weave a text about the National Rifle Association’s disturbing links with white supremacist groups, foreign governments, and Christian theocratic factions within and without the United States of America.
“Ignore the Truth. Forget the Name. Rewrite the History. Erase the Word. Silence the Voice. Destroy the Haven. Pass the Blame. The Truth Remains.”
The central text is embroidered in red thread atop heavily altered fabric-printed maps of school shooting locations, NRA headquarters, Washington DC, and Mar-a-Lago. It revisits a text I used in 2002 for ‘The Truth Remains.’ about anti-gay vandalism at the San Francisco Public Library. By the summer of 2016 I was fairly certain Donald J. Trump would secure the Republican nomination, and that the GOP would use every resource (legal or not) to help him win. I began planning and collecting material for the second version of ‘The Truth Remains’ the day after that nomination. My research eerily paralleled the Mueller Investigation into the GOP’s alliance with Russian hackers and politicians bent on sowing chaos in the US and discrediting democracy worldwide.
Smaller text appliques discuss the Second Amendment’s original wording and its perversion among some American subcultures, the phenomenon of school and other mass-shooting events, and the incident in December 2017 when my own high school in Aztec NM suffered two casualties from a former student intending on mass death.
Hand-inked text lists topics linked to gun-rights, gun-control, theocracy movements, and the GOP’s obvious use of gerrymandered districts, voter suppression, illegal campaign funding, and foreign hacking to remain in power in a society rapidly outgrowing its conservative tenets.
It is my hope that these five paperback-sized books mark a moment in American history when the forces of sanity marshaled themselves and drove down their domestic and foreign attackers. Failing that, I hope these books mark a moment of deep and sincere protest to inspire future readers to safeguard their democracy.
