Trey Blackwell Ms.

Caruso English 1101 31 October 2011 Make Art not War Over the years, violence seems to be the answer to many problems in this world. However, morally many know this only corrupts the society more than solving the problems nonviolently. From this we often see people advocate peace in many different ways. For example Matisyahu is a famous reggae artist who chose this narrow route of fighting violence and hatred through his lyrics. One Day is his most famous song that portrays this message. Even though music is heard worldwide it can often be difficult to get to certain genres and language translations depending on where one may live. Symbolism in art is something that surpasses any language barrier, which makes art the most viable option for spreading this message around the world. Matisyahu One Day was the original text I chose for my genre paper. This is a very good song and shares the message of ending violence well, but it has many limits to it. The reason why is not everyone can even get to this song due to places having language barriers and less technology then we have in America. This is why I chose to change my genre to a piece of artwork. Not only does it do what the song did, but it also does a little more due to the different pictures shown in it. This piece in my opinion conveys everything one needs to see about why peace should be enforced more, from seeing blood diamonds to bombs being dropped. Also for

anyone who just randomly looks at this artwork you can clearly look at the pictures represented and tell that it is symbolizing peace. My artwork that I made is a very symbolic piece due to all the pictures shown and all the different messages you can take from it. When one first glances at the artwork the first thing your eyes goes to be the very center of it at the main picture of the hand doing the peace sign. The reason I chose this as the centerpiece is because it is the main message trying to be conveyed through this piece. To go along with this I decided to put examples of peace starting in the top center of the picture, then expanding to the top left corner and left center. I did this to split the picture into examples of violence and then peace. If you look at the right, bottom and left corner of the picture you see five different examples of common violence seen in this world. Starting with the top right corner you see a blood diamond, which is a form of violence in which people use slaves to try to find diamonds for them. Most of the time when dealing with this blood is shed from slaves being killed or tortured through the efforts of finding the diamonds. This is a major form of violence that is seen quite frequently in Africa. Then if you go under that the next sub picture is one of words saying riot. The reason I put this in the picture is riots are a form of violence that occurs worldwide. An example of this would be people coming together protesting and then turning into a group of vicious looters. The last 3 pictures that take up the whole bottom of the picture deal with war and violence with any kind of weapon. This is the main problem that we see throughout the world whether it is war between countries, gang violence, robberies, or anything else that uses guns negatively.

Although this picture has many positives it does have many negatives to it too, when you compare it to the song. One of the main disadvantages when you think about this genre is the fact that it would be viewed online on a picture-sharing site. This would take away from the purpose of the picture because it would be limited to the amount of people around the world that have internet and can access these sites.