description:
Proposal for military Hummer tire tread pattern, inspired by Afghan war rugs.This piece is about the indiscriminacy of war-- in the tire tread pattern, the innocent characters are interspersed with the "offenders".There is a well-developed culture in this country of celebrating aggression. Military equipment is co-opted as "patriotic" toys in the civilian sphere. I wanted to add specificity to the "ass-kicking" aesthetic. Why not go ahead and illustrate all the asses that will be kicked in our military operations, including those counted as "collateral damage?" In this case, I have used the visual language of Afghan war rugs (a style developed during the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980s.) I have also interpreted imagery from Turkmen and Iranian traditional rugs. In drawing each motif, I referred back constantly to a variety of tire tread patterns, looking carefully at proportions and ratios, in order to make a pattern that reads equally as Afghan rug and tire tread.