So we here at id-iom didn’t really do anything related to the BLM movement when it jumped to the forefront of popular consciousness after the death of George Floyd. We weren’t really sure of our place in the narrative.
Anyway, it just so happened that at the time I was going down the rabbit hole that is the Youtube sidebar and to my surprise a song by Body Count came on. Body Count is an American heavy metal band formed in LA and fronted by rapper Ice-T. In my youth, I listened to a lot of Body Count but hadn’t come across them in years. The song that I came upon was ‘Body Count’ and whilst listening realised the parallels between what Ice T was angrily rapping about in 1992 and what is going on in America right now.
This whole saga has been going on for years. Let’s just hope we can get the message through to the next generation…
We here at id-iom aren’t really what you would call political beasts and we generally leave that kind of thing to others but occasionally things happen in the world which it’s difficult to ignore. My ‘thing’ consisted of watching the news last Sunday and being somewhat dismayed about what I was hearing about America’s newest leader. Not that it was qualitatively different to the nonsense that had come before but it somehow just made me fully realise that this perma-tanned narcissist was now ‘the leader of the free world’. Weird or what?
Anyway, a few days before i’d watched a video on caricatures so thought i’d give it a quick go with the Donald. Apparently the first thing you have to do is accentuate the part that represents most about him, so as you can see i drew his mouth a little puckered up and then put the symbol of free America – the bald eagle – as a little comedy bird which now lives in his wig. And that’s that. Politics class is over.
As you may possibly be able to guess from the title of this post and the fact that the picture has ‘An American Flight Attendant in London’ written on it – this picture was commissioned by an American flight attendant living in London who wanted to commemorate his couple of years living in the Big Smoke with a little something he could take back to wow the folks back home and try to prove that he didn’t spend absolutely all his hard earned pennies in the local pub…
We had him fill out the infamous id-iom questionnaire but truth be told we already had the design in mind and thankfully his answers only confirmed that our design was actually quite appropriate (his nickname of ‘the octopus’ was, after all, hard earned!) All that was left at that point was to apply the design to canvas. This is usually the swiftest part of the whole process but somehow this one managed to drag itself out a bit but at least we still managed to get it finished well in time for his final departure call. We even managed to get all the pub locals to sign the side of the canvas to give it that little extra sentimental boost.
So, as our newly minted envoy to the states hopefully he and this piece will be promoting the id-iom name stateside from here on in.
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