Artist: Eli Hill
Over the last cycle, I’ve been thinking hard about what I’ve read and what I’ve experienced as a Black person in America. I’ve recently had an experience with racial bias in the justice system, being pulled over by a police officer. It was incredibly scary, but I realized that I could use those feelings to make my final product for this project even better.
I wanted to create a piece that represents what people go through when they are mistreated by the system. I feel like my drawing should make use of color to convey emotion, and symbolism to convey the message that I want to send to my audience. I want to be able to reach people through simple methods like these while telling a complex story.
My next step is to start making a rough outline of my piece and continue to read up on statistical evidence that will help support what I’m saying through my work. A big challenge of doing a project like this one is backing up a truly emotional experience with factual evidence that can be used to show people the reality of what we are living. People are so much more inclined to believe that things are not good when there’s evidence to support it. Unfortunately when it comes to the criminal justice system, it takes numbers to convince people to see what we’ve already seen as Black people for years upon years.