Artist Statement-ohhh it gets ugly

The idea of manipulation can stretch far beyond more than one direction. It's used to trick, disguise, to attract attention or provide entertainment, awe, and criticism. It pokes fun, undermines or enhances, makes pure gold, shining brilliance. When manipulating images from the news, I turned to an activist, satirical state of mind. Here is a piece of information, now I must challenge why it is thought of as "news".

This is where The Duggars come in. They are a peaceful, god-loving (x 1,000) family of 20 - 10 boys and 8 girls, and Michelle and Bob- The source of all these children. They dress modestly, hardly watch TV, are homeschooled, never drink or perform any activities that might hint at unmentionable human desires. However, through all this devout behavior, Michelle and Bob don't know when to stop ... uh ... producing more prisoners to this liftesyle. They have left the growing numbers of children up to God's hand- Will they stop at 18? How far will this go, just because Bob and Michelle don't believe in using birth control? Hmm, seems like these unmentionable desires that God's children shouldn't desire have got the best of Bobby. Why would they have 18 children if he didn't like screwing so much?

And besides all this, which is just annoying, they're on tv promoting this idea that God should decide the course of our lives, which really only means: We don't want to use birth control but still want to fuck, so I guess we'll just have a kid everytime we have sex ... God will be pleased! I'm not a religion hater, though not religious myself, but this disturbs me. Who knows where this kind of thinking can go. Oh, I know: People who believe that that 9/11 occured because there are too many gay people displeasing God, therfore forcing him to punish us with thousands of deaths.

So, with all this disturbing information I cannot let the Duggars get off easy. I've decided to take a family portrait of them and turn it into a circus complete with Bob as the ringmaster, Michelle as the cross-bearing, bearded lady lifting up her overprotective and restricting skirts to let the little Duggar clown children play for a bit.

It's just one big circus to me- the cameras, the wedding of their oldest son at 20 years old. I'm not one to pass judgement usually, but all these things make my heart cry, and the only way to alleviate that pain is to make fun of them in photoshop.