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Bricks Richard Metz


sam ponders


About the bricks

Bricks as a painting surface are a humorous subversion of the ordinary painting on canvas. I hope that while laughing at the strangeness of a painting on a brick, the viewer will also reflect on both the history of bricks as the building material of American towns and cities, and the fact that bricks are ordinarily used by workers to earn their wages.
The characters painted on the bricks are inspired by that subversive children's author Theodor Geisel, Dr. Suess. I like how Geisel is able to make children laugh, read, and do this without harmful gender and class stereotypes. At times, Dr. Suess has also taken on societal issues such as prejudice, environmental destruction, and war fever. What I wanted to do was make characters with a deeper sense of introspection, for adults and children.
I have tried to combine the seriousness of the brick with the playfulness of a animal/ human hybrid. I want the viewer to be able to see these creatures acting out emotional moments with a freshness of eye, because these creatures are neither completely recognizable as human nor completely separate from us as animals.

Richard Metz


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