“Price Per Gallon”

“Price Per Gallon” was created Feb.-March 2003 for an open annual doll show at a Southern Oregon art gallery. The U.S. invasion of Iraq had just started, confusing an already perplexed and frightened world so soon after 9/11. Searching for ideas for the doll show, I found this doll at a thrift store and was attracted by the oddity of a doll with a frown on her face.

As news of events in Iraq spun through the media, the idea and reasoning for this piece literally grew out of that frown as well as my own frustrations with the war news. Like much of artistic expression, the mixture of the mediums in this piece left my control and evolved into an intuitive message. The doll is chained to a one-gallon gas can while toy soldiers painted purple adorn the can to represent a multitude of things: soldiers as the pawns of wealth, greed and power; Purple Hearts; and the ache for harmony and Peace. The final thrust of the message is the price tag that dangles from each soldier. I originally painted the doll's entire face with the blue and stars, but that covered up the frown, so I removed that paint and created the cowl effect. She has a dangling pierced earring in her left ear and combined with the natural hairdo previously styled by very small hands, both elements express resistance to the norm against a non-traditional background of the stars and stripes.

After it was finished and on exhibit at the doll show, “Price Per Gallon” was considered exceptionally weird in April 2003, even by a highly progressive community, and in the fall of 2004 almost shunned as being too eccentric at a gallery 40 miles away in the liberal and culturally-rich town of Ashland. Since then, “Price Per Gallon” has traveled a few thousand miles, lived in dark storage units enclosed in boxes, chained and guarded, chips of paint flaking away. I knew that someday this piece would again have its time and place, and here she sits, in this time, in this place, just as relevant...maybe even more so as women who not only carry and birth the world’s soldiers increasingly make up the number of warriors in the armed forces, but also relevant for all the mothers who bravely wrestle for the scepters of control to save their babies.

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At one point in the late 1980s I was a volunteer "Conversation Pal" for a language academy that helped college-bound youth wanting to learn English to attend college in the U.S. There was no language requirement on my part, just be able to have conversations in English. I was matched with a nervous, 18-year-old young man from Yemen, Tarik, who was terribly homesick, especially during the time of Ramadan when we first met. His brother had gone through the language academy at the local college and returned home, and Tarik was following in his footsteps. Both boys were encouraged and financed by their father in Yemen who owned a factory and wanted them to take over the family business. Tarik was a very sweet boy with some limited English-speaking skills, and we were able to converse with suggestions and hints from me along the way. He was focused and his English improved dramatically during the year we were paired. I invited him to dinner with my husband and kids, which was a rich experience for us all. After the year was up we both went our separate ways.

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I have successfully but not single-handedly gained control of my two sons' destinies by encouraging them to pursue less non-military options for their adult lives. I think that if they had chosen the military, I would have lost one to active duty, if not both, and/or both to PTSD. Instead, they are successful glass artists, great Dads with five children between them, and while respectful of others' decision to join the military, they have been traveling their own self-made paths of creativity toward non-aggression and peace.

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Since Yemen was violently invaded in 2015 and the country torn apart and destroyed, I have searched for Tarik online without any success. He would likely have married and had children, and be in his 50s by now, possibly with grandkids. Every time I see a photo of a starving child in Yemen, I wonder with a grieving heart if the child is one of his.