Everyone has a story to tell, and when those voices are silenced, the walls start to talk.

Whenever I create something, I always have the intent to tell a story. So, when I was presented with the challenge to take inspiration from another artist and place my own spin on her works, I jumped to telling a story that wouldn’t just fit for my own pieces, but would also hold echoes of the original artist. I selected Swoon, a street artist known for her large, mixed media street artworks, and got right to work. For these selected pieces, Modern Madonna, Blessed Are The Meek, and Boogeyman, the overarching narrative of the events that took place last September in Chicago. During the ICE raids on the city, parents were snatched from their children, families were dragged to the streets, children were thrust from their beds into the hands of strangers. All of this sounded like something out of a horror movie. With it not being spoken about much, I decided to lean into the uncertainty of it with the short film Boogeyman. Additionally, I wanted to lean into the idea that, once one has cast off their visage and any sort of humanity that they had, they are no different than the things of children’s nightmares, a real-life boogeyman if you will.

Modern Madonna is a piece that is featured in the short film, and she is based off the mothers who were prepared to lay down their own lives rather than let their children be taken. As for Blessed Are The Meek, I was informed while working on the film that ICE also was targeting the homeless populations of the cities they were in, and in places such as Chicago and D.C., a great deal of the homeless population are veterans who have already sacrificed for their country. In both works, I wanted to instill in the viewer that there was someone ready to give up their life for the one they loved, whether it be a mother with a young child, or a faithful companion and their human.