You Are Here

by Gabriella V. Guthrie

29" x 29" • Mixed Media on Found Gypsum Board $$105.00

ATTN Altered Esthetics: This is a submission for REJECTED! NOT Creative Blood. This piece was Rejected! from another MPLS group show in 2008 simply because it did not fit in with any of the other submissions. Statement: At the focal point in my piece flies a solitary pink balloon, held back only by a rooftop creature tightly gripping the balloon’s thin string. The creature is in the midst of the City. The City is both real and does not exist. It is the result of other peoples’ dreams, other peoples’ fears, other peoples’ compromises, and years and years of conflict. These people are not you. And yet here you are. You are here, on this rooftop, flying a balloon. The Other People know how to build shopping malls and big boxes, they know how to reduce congestion on the highways and the lowways, but they did not know you would climb above the strata of the pedestrians and the commuters to fly a balloon on the buildings they erected. The Other People did not know their skyscrapers weren’t the highest presence in the City. They did not know a roof could function outside its functions. Even you, rooftop creature, did not know it was possible to make the Other Peoples’ City yours.