Vacuum

By Guyon Prince

Artist’s Statement: This collage takes a smiling, vacuuming lady from a 1950s LIFE Magazine advertisement and recontextualizes her. As we know, in the 50s it was largely (and incorrectly) assumed that most women were happy to stay home and tend the house and kids every day, while men went out into the world. But in the new context the lady is now a superhero of sorts, vacuuming up ethical toxicity in the setting of our time—social media. However, I like to believe that her smile in the new context is sincere.

Guyon Prince, raised on the cotton farms of the West Texas Plains with Choctaw blood flowing through his veins, spent his formative years hunting arrowheads and carving makeshift arrows out of roofing shingles with his stilt-walking grandfather, his namesake. Eventually, the Texas winds carried him to the desert storms of Iraq as Sergeant Prince, leading troops in combat during Operation Iraqi Freedom and subsequent campaigns. Upon honorable discharge and restless with patriotism and disillusionment, Guyon enrolled in West Texas A&M University under the G.I. Bill, studying under Dr. Bonney MacDonald and Dr. Monica Hart, scholars of American and British literature, respectively. Renewed by Whitman’s verse and Emerson’s prose, Guyon obtained his teaching certifications in English and Fine Art. He currently commutes 30 miles a day to teach senior English to at-risk students. He lives with his partner, Sarah, their two children, and various domesticated mammals in Canyon, Texas.

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