Portfolio: Tanks
This is a work in progress.
Camouflage Tank is a half-scale M1 Abrams tank entirely covered in a hand-made hooked rug decorated in a traditional Afghan rug pattern. The finished piece will be 6' wide, 13' long (the cannon adds an additional 3 feet to the overall length) and will be covered by more than 1000 square feet of hand made carpet. The tank is rendered exactly to scale. It will come apart in sections that allow for it to fit through traditional doors. The hooked rug has a pile of approximately 3/4” and is predominantly red, blue, ivory and gold.
This piece represents a culmination of my work over the past three years that began with Carpet Bomb (a scale model of Fat Man covered in a hand-made carpet). I am fascinated with the war rugs from Afghanistan. These rugs, which incorporated images of tanks and guns into the traditional craft began to appear in the 1980’s and included images of Russian-made weapons. They represented the crossing over of military culture into the traditional practices.
I use American military imagery and American craft techniques in my work to highlight this crossover. Freedom Rug is a hooked rug made in the tradition of the war rugs from Afghanistan and includes images of current weaponry being used today in the Middle East.
As that region continues to be bathed in one bloody struggle after another, including our own involvement there over the last 8 years, I began to think about the idea of camouflage—not blending into the environment, but into the culture. Cultural camouflage.
Just as images of tanks continue to be woven into the traditional rugs, Camouflage Tank will be covered with a traditionally patterned rug,…armed with the culture of that troubled area, where violence has become the new tradition.
View images of the tank in progress on my facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.php?aid=2037225&id=1386630570&ref=mf